


to make a life

by gone_girl



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, Drug Use, F/F, past Eleanor/Max, past Silver/Madi, tw for:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 53,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gone_girl/pseuds/gone_girl
Summary: “What am I going to do with your name?” Max asks, a little incredulous.“Whatever you want,” the salesman says. “Didn’t you want something real?”Max heard a story once about the importance of answering questions like that carefully. If something emerges from the forest and asks for your name, don’t give it up, the story went. Offer only what you know you can live without. She’s never heard a story that tells her what to do when something emerges from the forest and offers its name to you.
Relationships: Anne Bonny/Max, Max & John Silver
Comments: 83
Kudos: 105





	1. i. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2002

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boltcutters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boltcutters/gifts).



“I wish that I could  
give you something…   
but I have nothing left. I am just   
an old stump. I am sorry…”

-Shel Silverstein, _The Giving Tree_

* * *

Tourist season is over. They have all gone straggling back to California, New York, Chicago, taking the last of the warmth of the summer with them. It is still as humid as ever, bearing down heavy and clammy against Max’s skin, and the open windows of the car give her no relief. When she finally gets home and walks the few short steps to her door, it feels like she’s wading through swampwater, cold and scummy and still. It’s a relief to peel off her clothes (business casual, navy blue and clean pink, professional) and drop them unceremoniously to the floor by the cheap welcome mat.

It’s not a nice house, but it’s a good one, the first one she ever bought with her own money. It keeps the rain out, and is solid underneath her as she sleeps. One day, soon, she will want one bigger and nicer, but for now, her creaky little house, with her bedroom upstairs and her splintery porch in front, is good.

She walks naked upstairs and straight into the shower. She stares at her feet, watches her foundation swirl down the drain. Slowly, Max eases herself into the ritual she’s built. She emerges from the shower, and ties herself into a fluffy robe. Walks through her good house, listens to the creak of the floorboards and the crowing of a bird outside her window. Drinks red wine with dinner, just because that is the kind of woman she is now. The kind who drinks red wine with dinner. 

She’s settling into what is setting up to be an excellent night. Her belly is full, her cheeks warm with the wine, her aching feet in a bucket of hot water and epsom salt. The windchimes outside are jangling cheerfully, and maybe this is why she doesn’t hear the sound of a car pulling into her driveway. She’s scanning through the channels on her television when there’s three slow knocks on the door.

She isn’t expecting anyone. After a moment’s hesitation, Max towels off her feet and slips into her house shoes. Her handgun is upstairs, too far to grab at a moment’s notice, but her landline is right in the kitchen, so Max doesn’t feel entirely unsafe as she opens the door a couple inches. She squints at the man through the chain lock.

“No solicitors,” Max says.

“‘Scuse me, ma’am,” the stranger says. “I do admit I’m a solicitor by day, but I won’t try and sell you nothing. Just tired. Could use some coffee and a soft place to sit for a few minutes.” It’s more out of curiosity than anything that Max unlocks the chain and opens the door to get a better look at the stranger. His car, tiny and shitty parked beside hers, has a Connecticut license plate, but he seems like a sweet Southern boy, his accent honey-thick and his eyes earnest. He has a broad, brown face, a trustworthy face, with a strong nose and a beard that doesn’t hide a guileless smile. His long black hair is half tied back, and he’s wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans. Cheap ones, she notes, not sturdy, not made to last. In fact, the only sturdy thing he’s wearing is a pair of scuffed Timberland boots. Max is equal parts amused and curious. She steps aside to let him in.

“Sit,” she says. “I will put the coffee on.”

“Thank you kindly.” The salesman follows her inside. He walks slightly lopsidedly, although she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t paying attention.

“Lovely home,” the stranger sighs as he stretches out his legs. “Lived here long?”

Max pours him coffee, and he smiles in thanks. “In this house? No. But I have been in Missouri for a few years now.”

“Charmin’ place, ain’t it?” he says, giving her a brilliant smile. “Where’d you live before? France?”

Max tops off her glass of wine. “My God, no,” she says lightly. “I am a lot of things, but never French. I was raised in New Orleans.” That makes his facade twitch in what looks like the first genuine expression she’s seen in him yet, a sharp amusement. It smooths over in a moment, back to his genial little farm boy impression.

“Great city,” the stranger says. “You speak Creole?”

“Haitian Creole,” Max says, sipping from her glass. “My first language, and where I was born. I still like it better than English or French.”

Max lets the stranger lead the conversation this way, banal small talk almost pleasant in the warmth of her good house. The stranger makes his smiling way through two cups of coffee. Max can’t deny that he is a good liar, his body language open and honest, his eyes wide, his words sweet. If he’d driven another half-mile to Mrs. Whitmore down the road, he would have found a mark that swallowed the act hook, line, and sinker.

Finally, Max sets down her glass on the dark wood of the coffee table. She leans back in her seat, waiting for the stranger to stop chattering. He falters as he sees her watching.

“What is the game here?” Max asks. 

“Pardon?”

Max fixes him with a look. “I asked you what your game is,” she says.

The stranger stares back at her. Then he laughs, a real, full belly laugh, not the offhand chuckles he’s offered up until now. When he speaks again, he’s lost the accent, and his black eyes glint. “It wasn’t something _bad,”_ he says, still laughing. “I have a bunch of cheap shit in my trunk. Fake watches. Magazine subscriptions. I was going to figure out what it seemed like you would buy, and wouldn’t you know it, I’m a salesman for that exact thing.”

“Does that work?” Max asks. It’s a sincere question, but the salesman looks a little offended.

“Yeah, it works,” he says, miffed. “It’s worked for six states now.”

Max picks up her glass and sips, watching him. His real accent is hard to place. Quick and sharp, like a northerner, but with a strange lilt to his vowels. “What were you planning to sell me?” she asks.

The stranger gives her a smile, a real one. “Chanel No. 5,” he says. “It’s fake, though. Something tells me you would have noticed.”

“I would have,” Max agrees, laughing. Eleanor wears Chanel perfume, which is the only reason she knows what it smells like, but she isn’t about to tell this stranger so. “You will have to sell me something real.”

The salesman strokes his beard thoughtfully. “Well, then, I guess I’ll find something real,” he says.

Max watches the stranger get in his car. Night has fallen fully now, and as his taillights recede down the road, the only light remaining is the fireflies and the heavy moon. It seems to be just kissing the great tree in front of the house from where she watches it. She lingers in her doorway a few moments longer, breathing in the cool night air. It doesn’t seem so stifling anymore.

The humidity holds for days. When it finally rains, it rains quick and fresh, turning the air crisp. The Ozarks are sleepy this late in the year, the tourists gone but the town still glutted with out-of-towner cash, but the good weather makes spirits high. The autumn sky is so sweet that Idelle begs her to cut the workday short. She tells her alluring stories about August’s motorboat, the hum of it in time with the rushing river, the cool spray of the water on exposed arms, mouth full of hard lemonade and laughter.

Max relents. They leave the office an hour early, all three employees of the agency, the beginnings of the dream Max has been building for so long. 

The three of them laze about on August’s shitty old boat for hours. There’s even a few bottles of Mike’s in the cooler, and Idelle brought sandwiches and watermelon. It’s good for this late in the season, red and sweet, and Max lies on her back, enjoying the weak sunlight.

“How did you know to bring lunch for all three of us?” Max asks.

Idelle hides her smile behind her watermelon. “Didn’t think even you would have the heart to keep us inside on a day like this,” she says. Max pretends to be annoyed with her, throwing the plastic sandwich baggie at her. Idelle laughs and flicks water back. 

The temperature drops with the sun, and Max’s teeth begin to chatter. August brings them back to the riverbank, and Max drives home feeling more cheerful than she has in a while.

There’s a tiny little car with Connecticut plates in her driveway, and a familiar, curly-headed stranger sitting on her porch like they had an appointment to keep. He’s playing with the windchimes hanging there, and the sound carries down to the road. Max loves those windchimes. They’re one of only two things that came with the house that she didn’t throw away.

“Ashanti,” the salesman says as Max sits down in the chair opposite him. 

“What about her?” Max says. 

“Do you listen to her?” the stranger asks.

Max shrugs. “Sometimes,” she says. All the time, actually, but she doesn’t want to give the stranger the satisfaction.

The salesman produces two slips of paper and waves them at her. “What would you say if I had two tickets to see her live?” he asks.

Max does feel a burst of excitement at that. Then she looks a little closer at the triumph on his face, and she crosses her arms. “I would say that you do not seem like the type to buy expensive concert tickets just to impress a stranger.”

The salesman’s face falls, and he stuffs the papers back into his pocket. “I had you for a second, though, right? Don’t lie. I got you for a second.”

Max rolls her eyes, but can’t help laughing. “You are ridiculous,” she says. “Coffee?”

The stranger follows her inside. A cold breeze blows from the river, making the windchimes sing.

“I don’t think we’re strangers anymore,” he says.

“Take your shoes off in my house,” Max replies.

“Make that coffee, and I will.”

Max busies herself in the kitchen. The stranger appears in the doorway a few moments later. His left foot seems to thunk heavily against the floor whenever he puts it down. She supposes her gaze lingers for a moment too long, because when she looks up at him, he gives her a wry smile and hikes up his left pant leg. Above the sock is aluminum and plastic. She doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t provide any other information. He seems almost embarrassed to have revealed that much, and speaks a little louder than necessary as he takes the coffee.

“So what will it take for me to be able to sell you something?”

“I already told you,” Max says, adding milk and sugar to her coffee. She takes it light and sweet, and the stranger makes a face as she spoons sugar into her cup. “Something real. You have not offered me that yet.”

The stranger hums and sips his black coffee.

The salesman returns three more times over the next two weeks, each time bringing something new and ridiculous to sell her. They order dinner each time, and Max listens to him, mouth full of beef lo mein, enumerating the reasons why she should buy a Johnny Cash vinyl record (“It’s a classic, come on-” “I don’t have a record player, idiot.”), a vacuum cleaner (“No offense, but it’s kind of fucking dusty in here.” “Fuck off.”), and finally, something odder than that.

“Your _name?”_

“Once in a lifetime opportunity,” the stranger says, his salesman’s smile glinting on his face. “Don’t you want it?”

“What am I going to do with your name?” Max asks, a little incredulous. She thinks back over the last few visits and realizes that the salesman neatly avoided telling her his name. It seems insane, now, that she still doesn’t know it.

“Whatever you want,” the salesman says. “Didn’t you want something real?”

Max heard a story once about the importance of answering questions like that carefully. If something emerges from the forest and asks for your name, don’t give it up, the story went. Offer only what you know you can live without. She’s never heard a story that tells her what to do when something emerges from the forest and offers its name to you.

“I am not sure that is something I want to buy,” Max says. “But I hope that you give it to me anyway.”

“Because that’s what friends do?” the stranger asks.

“Something like that.”

The salesman leans back in his seat. Outside, the windchimes clink softly.

“I don’t think I’ll be here much longer,” he admits. “I hope I will. But I don’t think so.”

And that- unexpectedly- makes her heart pang. She’s started to look forward to the stranger’s visits.

“Where will you go?” Max says finally. “Back to Connecticut?”

“No,” the stranger says. “I don’t know where I’ll go.”

They finish their dinner quietly. The melancholy does lift soon, though. It’s hard to be sad like this, eating a good meal in a good house with a new friend, the windchimes ringing softly.

Later, they go out on the porch to talk. The stranger lights a cigarette for himself, and then offers the lighter to Max. She accepts. The moonlight shines dully on the cigarette smoke as they blow it out in twin clouds.

“If you want to stay,” Max says, “I can help you get a job.”

The stranger smiles and sucks his cigarette. “I already have one or two job offers,” he says. “Don’t know if I’m taking them.”

“That was fast.”

“I’m charming,” the salesman says, shrugging. Then he laughs. “To everyone but you.”

Max snorts. She taps her ashes over the arm of her chair, watching them settle to the porch. “Don’t try so hard,” she suggests.

It’s so easy to sit out there on her raggedy old porch with this stranger, talking endlessly. It’s like she’s known him for years. That makes it all the more ridiculous when he finally introduces himself as Silver. He offers no other information, whether this is a first or last or fake name, and she does not ask.

“Good night, Silver,” Max says.

“Good night, Max,” Silver says.

It’s October now, and the cold is setting in in earnest. There are no more jaunts on the river. The shitty office space they rent is drafty, so Max has to bring in her own space heater. Silver doesn’t return for a few more weeks, and Max stops expecting him to. There’s someone else who hasn’t contacted her in a long time either, and that… that bothers Max more than it should.

She’s working late today. Real estate is a tricky business to be in in a place like this, so subject to the whim of tourists, but they’ve made it through one off season already. Max is getting more and more confident as their bottom line edges closer and closer to the black. Still, it requires more time and some finagling, so Max, once a week, lets Idelle and August go early, and she stays late to organize their finances. It’s tedious work, but there are worse things that work could be.

The work for the day is almost done when the phone rings. Max looks up from her computer. For a moment, she debates which would be worse, losing a potential client or gaining one that is so annoying that they would call past 5 P.M. on a Friday. Then she picks up, her voice customer-service smooth. 

“Crown Realty, how may I help you?”

“Max?”

Max feels her hand tighten on the phone, and she keeps her voice carefully controlled. “With whom am I speaking?” she says, knowing exactly with whom she’s speaking.

“It’s Eleanor. I’m sorry, I called your house, but no one was there.”

“Obviously,” Max says, trying very hard not to betray her nerves.

She hears Eleanor take a deep breath. “Can I see you?”

This is a bad idea. She knows it’s a bad idea. Max presses the pad of her thumb to the thin skin on her browbone, trying to stave off her fluorescent-light headache.

“I need to finish some work first.”

Relief is clear in Eleanor’s voice. “Okay. I can come to you. What time?”

Max pushes her thumb deeper, knowing she’s smudging her makeup. “Seven?”

“Perfect. I’ll bring dinner.”

Then Eleanor has hung up before Max even has a chance to agree. Max slams the phone down and folds her arms on the desk, putting her head down. She’s abruptly very glad Idelle and August have left already, although it might have been for the better if they were still here. Idelle’s reproachful gaze might have convinced her to refuse Eleanor, for once.

Max forces herself to finish her work for the week, knowing she’ll resent it if she leaves it for Monday. It takes longer than usual to drive through town, the streets crowded with children in costumes, and Max is reminded that it’s Halloween.

Her driveway is empty when she reaches it. In a moment, she’ll have to go inside, change her clothes, fix her makeup, tidy the living room. Before she does, Max reaches out a hand and presses it to the tree that stands between the road and the house. It’s a big, low tree, an old tree, and it half obscures her house from view. It would increase the value of the property to get rid of it, to cut away branches that cast afternoon shadows over the house, to dig up roots that make a front garden impossible. But Max likes it there. It’s the one other thing she didn’t throw away. There’s a sense of safety in living in shadows, the voice of the windchimes tinkling hypnotically in the breeze.

Eleanor arrives at five past. She hears the smooth rumble of the Lexus pull in, but Max stays seated, determinedly not going to the door until Eleanor actually knocks. 

“Hi,” Eleanor breathes. 

Max steps back wordlessly to let Eleanor inside. She catches Eleanor looking around and almost says something rude about how if Eleanor wanted _nice_ she should have invited Max over, but she stops herself. She doesn’t really want to know why Eleanor didn’t invite Max to her big, new, nice nice nice McMansion. She can guess that well enough.

Eleanor brought Italian food. Max reheats and plates it, and they sit together at Max’s table to eat. They make small talk as Max waits for Eleanor to tell her what it is she’s doing here, face to face with her for the first time in months. The first time, certainly, since August 28th. She remembers the date. She remembers seeing pictures in the newspaper the day after, getting a sour feeling in her stomach as she realized she was never meant to attend.

It takes almost the entire dinner for Eleanor to finally say what she has to say. Max thinks with an awful, embarrassing wistfulness that the Eleanor she once knew was so much bolder than this, so much truer.

“I wanted to talk to you about some business matters,” Eleanor says at last, folding her hands in her lap.

Max hums to show that she’s listening. If Eleanor was paying attention, she would have noticed the way Max’s hand tightened ever so slightly around her wineglass.

“The mayor and sheriff would like to work together on an initiative to develop the area,” Eleanor says. “I’ll be spearheading the logistics.” Max notices that Eleanor pointedly does not say _my father and husband,_ as though simple word choice might absolve her of nepotism.

“Develop it how?” Max says delicately, setting down her glass.

“For the past thirtysome years, the region has come to rely increasingly on summer tourism,” Eleanor explains. “We would like to work on stimulating the economy so that it doesn’t rely only on the summer months, and hopefully build businesses that will attract and employ people all year round. We’re already working on reaching out to investors in nearby cities to start work on housing developments, malls, maybe a casino. Attractions that don’t rely on good weather.” She says all of this like she knows it by heart. She probably does.

“Where do I come into all this?” Max asks. “If I am to be involved, why did it take you so long to reach out to me?” _Why has it been so long since we spoke? Why didn’t you invite me to your wedding? Why did you come to me like this, to my home under cover of night, a lover’s meal in your hands and a businessman’s words in your mouth?_

“We have been talking to several different real estate agencies,” Eleanor says. “We want one we can work with consistently. One we can trust.”

“And you trust me?” Max says softly, just to see the spark of guilt in Eleanor’s expression. “Your husband trusts me?”

“I told him that you are smart and capable,” Eleanor says firmly. “He trusts me.”

Max wants to laugh at that, laugh wildly, at the idea of trusting Eleanor. She wants to get to her feet so quickly her chair falls over. She wants to throw the bottle of expensive wine across the room. She wants to scream. She wants, for a second, to be silly and hysterical, to let her feelings take precedence over a deal that will make her rich. She wants to be one of those histrionic and uncultured and illogical women that Woodes Rogers believes she is, that Eleanor Guthrie believes she is different from.

She does none of these things. She only smiles serenely and retorts calmly, in a way that Eleanor will hear and respect and perhaps even feel.

“Am I supposed to take this as an apology?” Max asks. “For not investing in my agency when you swore you would?” This is the least of the promises that Eleanor broke, but Max only needs to invoke this one for Eleanor to look away guiltily.

“Take it however you want,” Eleanor says tightly, and Max feels some small victory in hurting her feelings. “You’re good at what you do. And you would be an asset to this initiative.”

“I would,” Max says. She leans back in her chair and finishes the last sip in her glass. “Have your office call mine on Monday. During working hours, please.”

Eleanor doesn’t stay much longer after that. As Max walks her out, she grabs a coat and her cigarettes.

“You really shouldn’t smoke,” comments Eleanor as she tugs her own coat on. “Nasty habit.”

Max doesn’t answer. She opens the door for Eleanor, and they both walk out onto the porch. The air is still. The windchimes are silent.

“I’ll set up a meeting next week,” Eleanor says. “Woodes and my father will be there. A few other people you should meet. Anyone you think should be there?”

“Idelle Featherstone,” Max says immediately. “She works with me.”

Eleanor nods. “I’ll see you then,” she says.

“Good night,” Max says.

“Good night,” Eleanor says. She almost seems to have more on the tip of her tongue, but Max turns away. She doesn’t want to hear it.

Max sits on her porch long after Eleanor’s taillights have disappeared, chain smoking and watching the moon rise. She thinks about that old story, and wonders if she can live without what she’s just given up.

It’s late when a tiny car pulls up in her driveway. Silver emerges from it to find her huddled in her coat, lighting her last cigarette.

“You look frozen,” Silver says.

“I’m not in the mood tonight,” Max says tiredly. “I don’t feel like buying.”

Silver steps forward, out of the shadow of that big old tree, and in the moonlight, she sees his face. He looks hopelessly sad, like nothing in the world will reignite that clever little smile. Max feels a bit like that too. Silver holds out a bottle of whiskey. “I won’t try to sell you this if you drink it with me.”

“Deal,” Max says. 

Max doesn’t put out her cigarette before they go inside. In a strange way, even that makes her feel better, the fact that Silver doesn’t make a face or comment when she blows smoke at the ceiling. She lets him go into the kitchen and return with two glasses, and he pours them both a healthy amount of dark liquor.

“Had a bad day too?” Max asks.

Silver shrugs. He’s staring at his socks. He took off his boots without her having to ask, this time.

“Are you still going to leave?” Max tries really hard not to show how much she doesn’t want him to go, but she thinks he might see it anyway, with the way he smiles wryly at her.

“I was going to,” he says. “But… I don’t know.”

“What kept you here so long?” Max asks.

“A woman.” Silver scrubs a hand over his face and drinks half of his glass in one go. He laughs. “Crossed six states, just to trip outside her door.”

Max taps her cigarette against the ashtray and takes a sip of the whiskey. It doesn’t go smooth down her smoke-raw throat, but she relishes the burn of it. She takes another swallow, just to feel it pool in her stomach.

“I came here for a woman, too,” she says quietly. “And I stayed.”

Silver scrutinizes her. “But not with her,” he says.

“Not with her.”

Silver shakes his head. They keep drinking, uncharacteristically quiet, for the two of them. The breeze has started up again, though, and Max lets the windchimes talk for her, for now.

“She’s just.” Silver stops. His brown face has become ruddy with drink, and he looks horribly frustrated, as though he can’t come up with something to say. “She’s so much. You know? I feel stupid coming here. Stupid staying. But stupid leaving, too.”

Max studies him, glass poised at her lips to drink. Clumsy words from a man who usually seems to have such a command over them. His whole body looks tense, curled in on itself, tight with things he can’t seem to say. Maybe things he can’t even realize. Max wonders if she looked like this, years ago.

* * *

If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there is still hope. The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born--waiting to see the light.

-bell hooks, _All About Love_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> silver wears timbs and that is my agenda


	2. ii. NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, 1996

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for recreational drug use

See I remember when we were driving, driving in your car   
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk   
City lights lay out before us   
And your arm felt nice wrapped ‘round my shoulder   
And I had a feeling that I belonged   
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

-Tracy Chapman,  _ Fast Car _

* * *

Max has always enjoyed stability. In fact, it’s something she prides herself on, her ability to acclimate to anything, to learn the rules to any game, given enough time. It’s why this job works for her, because the rules are simple, and she’s a natural at the game.

Every worknight, she comes in, bag slung over her shoulder, and pays the house fee. It’s high, but it’s all right, because she knows she will make more. She will change and do her makeup, all the other girls laughing and shouting and getting ready around her. Diamond will offer her a cigarette. Star will complain loudly about her toddler, and Candy will laugh and pet her hand and offer advice. The air will be clouded with smoke, all different kinds of it, pre-shift pick-me-ups. Max will only ever have her cigarette.

Lola will take her by the hand and tug her out of the changing room, onto the floor. The lights will just be going low, neon replacing fluorescent, and the music will be echoing emptily, only a couple awkward early birds pecking around. Max will feel the first press of her heels against the ever-sticky floor. She will feel the corners of her face lift coyly, her eyebrows arching, her mouth tilting. There will always be a man out here who believes he is in love with her, and if there isn’t, she will find a new one to wrap securely around her finger. Sometimes she will fuck them. Sometimes she won’t.

It’s stable. Even though the manager is a piece of shit, even though sometimes Max or Lola or the other girls will have to play security better than the bouncers, even though she’s been groped and slapped and followed, it’s stable. She knows this job. She understands it. She’s good at it. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, and Max thinks she’s long due to spit some contempt back at the world.

All of this to say, Max fucking hates Mardi Gras.

It fucks with the routine. It’s impossible to know what to expect, because in all the years she’s been doing this, Mardi Gras has never been predictable, not even compared to the other holidays she works. The clients will be tourists, and already drunk. That is the only given, on Mardi Gras.

“Just stay home, baby,” Lola says when Max voices this to her. “God knows you do all right every other night of the year.”

Lola is one of the oldest girls in the club. She’s darker-skinned than Max, Honduran, and it’s only in her voice that Max likes hearing the word  _ baby _ .

“No,” Max says. 

Lola laughs, and the smell of menthol cigarettes wafts over Max’s face. Lola is fixing her wig for her, and Max sits still. Most nights, she wouldn’t worry about it too much, because her usuals are so enamored with her that they’d probably pay her to show up bald in a burlap bag. But this is Mardi Gras night, and she is being careful.

“Smoke?” 

Max doesn’t have to look when she takes the cigarette from Diamond. It’s already lit, the base covered in Diamond’s sticky lipgloss. She takes a bracing drag as Lola pulls away.

“Perfect,” she says. 

“Mardi Gras really that bad?” Tiffany asks apprehensively. Lola kisses her teeth.

“You scaring the new ones, baby,” she says to Max.

Max looks back at Tiffany. She’s older than Max is now, but she only started working a few months ago, and Max can’t help feeling a little protective.

“Maybe not bad ,” Max says. “Surprising. Don’t worry, cheri.”

Across the room, Kitty laughs. “I love when you say that,” she calls. “ _ Cheri.  _ Sound exactly like my grandma.”

Max blows Kitty a kiss. The banter with her friends calms her slightly, and when she makes her way onto the floor with Lola, she feels a little better.

It’s only just past 10 P.M., but it’s already crowded, and the air smells like 1 A.M. The blue and pink neon lights give everything a hazy sheen, glowing off of sweaty skin and smoke hanging in the air. Lola squeezes her hand and with a brief smile, slips into the crowd, and then Max is alone. Max takes a drag of her cigarette and is thinking reluctantly about putting it out and getting to work when, entirely by chance, she makes eye contact with a woman.

The woman doesn’t work here, which is immediately obvious. She’s sitting among a few men, and she’s dressed just like them, cargo pants and a plain white shirt. The man next to her is big, and he has his hand curled loosely over her thigh, but she isn’t paying him any mind. Her eyes, shining in the low light, are fixed on Max. 

Experimentally, Max closes her lips around the cigarette again and sucks. The woman stares, unabashedly hungry, and Max smiles. Slowly, she begins picking her way through the crowd, coming to a stop at the woman’s table. She can feel the men’s eyes on her, but it’s the woman’s she’s focused on, shocking blue and sharp.

With the two fingers holding the cigarette, Max touches the woman’s lips. They part immediately, and, delicately, Max places the cigarette there.

“Can you hold this for me?” Max whispers. It isn’t loud, but she knows the woman hears it.

The woman smokes Max’s cigarette as Max dances. It isn’t much, just a preview, really, but the other men at the table are whooping and crowing as if this is their success, paying her as if she’s there for them. The woman doesn’t make a sound, just watches and puffs on the cigarette like she’s dying. When the cigarette is burned down to the lipstick-stained butt, Max bends down, her face right by the woman’s ear. As she gently takes the cigarette, letting her fingers brush over the woman’s lips, she breathes in. She smells sweat and smoke, but underneath it is something floral. Something rich. Max’s eyes drop to the exposed tag at the back of the woman’s neck. It says GUCCI.

“I want to give you a private dance,” Max murmurs. Greed is making her forward, more than she usually is, but she reads the same greed reflected in the woman’s eyes. And, of course, she’s read her right. 

The woman stands up so fast she knocks the man’s hand aside. He looks up at her, looking genuinely wounded, and Max almost laughs.

“Eleanor,” he says, hurt. “I thought we were gonna-”

“Relax, Charles, I’ll be back,” Eleanor says. Max notices idly that they have the same thick accent, a rural kind of lilt. Amusedly, she wonders if this is the right occasion to use the word hillbilly.

Max is brought out of her thoughts when Eleanor digs in the pocket of her cargo pants and pulls out a thick wad of singles to toss at Charles without looking at him. “Have fun, boys.” A rich hillbilly.

Eleanor snakes a possessive arm around Max’s waist, and Max leads her to the back rooms. They’re empty, this early in the night, so Max tugs Eleanor into the first room they pass.

It’s been a long time since someone this wealthy was in this club (which, Max isn’t too proud to admit, is a shitty club), and it’s been even longer since she was attracted to a client. Eleanor is wealthy and sexy and fun, even, and Max thinks dizzily that this is the first time such a person has ever stepped foot in this shitty goddamn club.

They spend all night in that back room, fucking and talking and smoking cigarettes. Max runs her thumb over Eleanor’s studs (real diamonds, she’s sure) and breathes in her perfume (it has to be designer, the way the scent still clings to her) and asks if Eleanor’s sure she wants to stay and keep paying just to talk (she answers yes, every time).

_ Maybe not bad,  _ she’d said, placating.  _ Surprising. _

And oh, Eleanor is surprising. Unpredictable. Bold. She talks animatedly, with her hands, talks about her father the mayor, a shithead who ignores the poverty in his own town in favor of corporate interests, talks about compassion and innovation as the soul of progress instead of money, talks and talks and talks and Max finds herself listening.

But Eleanor is also a sophomore at University of Missouri Kansas City, and still has class this week. So, pressing a last kiss to Max’s mouth and setting $500 cash on the table, Eleanor leaves around 2 A.M.

It’s enough money that Max doesn’t feel even a little guilty about leaving two hours before the club closes. The street is still alive with Mardi Gras madness, but Max has the strange thought that maybe a little instability can be a good thing, sometimes.

She doesn’t expect to see Eleanor ever again. She doesn’t tell anyone about that night, holding it close to her chest, like someone might take it away from her if she reveals it.

But then, two weeks later, on a Saturday night, Eleanor is the first person to walk in after opening time. Max is sitting on the stage with Lola and Diamond, chatting, and the words die in her throat when she sees Eleanor. It’s strange to see her in proper lighting. Her thin face seems a little paler, a little pinker, but no less confident.

Eleanor asks to take her out for another $500. 

These are not the rules, not to any game she knows. This is not stability. This is not predictability. 

Max hops off the stage, and says, “I’ll be right back.”

It’s a wonderful night. Eleanor takes her to a restaurant, and then a club (a nice one, and Max doesn’t have to do anything but sit there and let Eleanor give her champagne), and then they go back to Eleanor’s room. Fucking, talking, smoking.

Max tries to fit Eleanor into her life, tries to make it stable. But it doesn’t work. Eleanor never asks her for the same thing twice. Sometimes she pays Max for three hours, sometimes for five days. Sometimes she takes Max to a club that charges $300 for a table. Sometimes they spend days on end tangled in Eleanor’s sheets, ordering room service. Sometimes Eleanor will bring drugs, good drugs, and they take them together. This, too, is never the same thing twice. One night, they wander glittering New Orleans together, out of their skulls on ecstasy, and Max feels as though she has never seen this city before. The river looks beautiful, suddenly, and Max thinks that if she poked her tongue out she could taste the music that’s drifting in the summer air like snowflakes.

“What are you doing?”

Max feels Eleanor’s cool hands on her overheated face, and it takes a moment for Eleanor’s bright bright eyes to come into focus. Cool, blue, sharp, throwing the hazy gold of the city into delicious relief. 

Max puts her tongue back in her mouth. “Tasting,” she says. “I’ve never done this.”

“Molly is crazy the first time,” Eleanor agrees. Her palms are still framing Max’s face, and the cool touch is driving her insane. She grabs Eleanor’s wrists, not to push her away, just desperate to be touching as much of Eleanor’s skin as possible. Eleanor’s heartbeat pulses under the skin of her wrist, and Max wonders, crazily, if she pierced Eleanor’s skin, would the blood flow out blue and cold?

“I did not mean that,” Max breathes.

“Oh,” Eleanor whispers. “Then I’ve never done this either.”

They wander the city until the sun begins to rise, and they’ve circled all the way back to Eleanor’s hotel. They haven’t come down, and every brush of Eleanor’s skin against hers is making Max want her, sparks blooming at the cool touch.

But Eleanor says no. “You’re not supposed to fuck on molly,” she says, even as she tugs Max to the bed. 

So, instead, they strip naked and lie together, blankets thrown to the floor, legs tangled and bodies aligned. Max has her face pressed into the crook of Eleanor’s neck and shoulder, breathing in the smell of her. She imagines that if they get close enough, they might just meld together, a creature made of molten gold and frozen water, smoke and Chanel perfume, body glitter and blue blood. When does touch stop being touch, and start being a perfect seam between two parts of one? 

The comedown isn’t so bad, holding tightly to each other. Eleanor rearranges them just enough to light a cigarette. Max closes her eyes, breathing in the comforting, familiar smell.

When the sun is all the way up, and the euphoria of the night has quieted and given way to the bustle of the day, Eleanor and Max fall asleep, just like that, a four-legged, two-hearted creature.

Such is their courtship, smokey and bright, a sheen of sweat to it all. Eleanor is ambitious, and Max never has been. Even this is a heady kind of thrill, to be loved by somebody who burns so brightly.

“Be careful, baby,” Lola says, her brow knit in concern.

“Careful for what?” Diamond snorts. “You go and be with that white girl. I don’t even know why you still work here.” All summer, Eleanor has been whisking Max away from the club once or twice a week. Probably, Max thinks, for this exact reason: to show all the other girls exactly how cherished Max is.

“It is not forever,” Max says primly as she applies her makeup. She always takes care not to suggest words like  _ courtship _ or _ loved _ or  _ cherished _ to the other girls. She doesn’t even suggest them to Eleanor, although Eleanor has no such restraints. She is, however, beyond the point of trying to hide them from herself, and she tastes the lie even as she says it. “It’s not stable. She’ll stop all this one day.”

“Get what you can while you can,” Diamond advises. Max turns back to her mirror, not letting anyone see the secret little smile on her face.

She doesn’t stop. And two years go by, and Eleanor graduates from school, and the talks get more serious, more long-term. Eleanor talks like they’ll still be together, years from now. Max confesses her long-held thoughts of being a realtor, something stable, something respectable. It feels like she’s giving something up, but Eleanor takes her sacrifice gently. It’s nothing, next to Eleanor’s ambitions, her determination to change the world, but Eleanor doesn’t make her feel like nothing. She puts a hand on Max’s face, and she says, “Move back to Missouri with me. Get your real estate license. I’ll invest in your startup. I promise.”

* * *

KI-TEK  
Yes, she's so innocent. And kind.  
A rich person who's also  
kindhearted.

Chung-Sook stops mid-sip and stares at Ki-Tek.

CHUNG-SOOK  
Not "also kindhearted." She's  
kindhearted because she's rich.  
You get it?

Ki-Tek doesn't. Chung-Sook looks around --

CHUNG-SOOK (CONT'D)  
If I had all this, my heart would  
be overflowing with kindness!

-Bong Joon-Ho,  _ Parasite _


	3. iii. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2002

Two passing temporarinesses developed feelings for one another. Two puffs of smoke became mutually fond.

-George Saunders,  _ Lincoln in the Bardo _

* * *

Max comes downstairs to find Silver asleep on her couch. The empty bottle of whiskey is still on the coffee table, and just the sight makes her head throb.

She tries to make her cereal as quietly as possible, but Silver is, evidently, a light sleeper, and when her spoon clatters into the bowl, she hears him groan. Max emerges from the kitchen to find him sitting up, his hair tangled and eyes still foggy with sleep.

“Morning,” he grunts.

“It’s past noon,” Max replies. She isn’t really in the mood to talk much more, her hangover making her irritable, so she just sits and eats her cereal. Silver gets to his feet, and Max sees him wince in pain.

“Shouldn’t’ve finished the bottle then,” she remarks.

“What? No. It’s just-” Silver stops, looking like he’s not sure whether or not to be embarrassed. Max doesn’t know why, considering the fact that they’d been drunkenly moaning their troubles to each other all night. Silver seems to come to the same conclusion, and he continues. “Not supposed to keep the leg on all night.”

“Oh.” Max softens. She moves to get up, thinking that she should make him a bowl, but he waves her away.

“‘S’fine,” he says gruffly. Then, without asking, he goes into her kitchen and makes himself cereal.

They sit together, two adults, eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch in silence at 1 P.M.

Silver looks at her when he’s done. She thinks he’s going to tell her something important, or sad, or something, but he just belches and says, “You should buy Froot Loops next time.”

Max goes back to her cereal.

Silver leaves soon after that. Max fiddles around her house for a while before finally accepting defeat. She sits herself on the kitchen counter, address book open in her lap, and dials Idelle.

“You had dinner with  _ who?” _

“Idelle,” Max says. “Calm down.”

“Jesus, Max, after everything she put you through?” Idelle demands. “God, please tell me you didn’t fuck her. Please.”

“I did not fuck her,” Max says, a little stung. She has more self control than that. “It was a business meeting.”

That gives Idelle pause. “What’s she need us for?” she asks. “She’s a Guthrie. Who married a Rogers. She doesn’t need real estate.”

“Well, the Guthries and the Rogerses are starting a development initiative,” Max says. “Condos. Malls. Casinos. All of those need real estate.”

Idelle chews on that for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is flat. “So she, what? Wants the Ozarks to be rich? The Hamptons in Missouri?”

“Yes,” Max says. She knew Idelle wouldn’t like the idea, Idelle who was raised on Ozark folktales and fish, who despises tourists and rich out-of-towners with everything in her.

“You’re not fuckin’ serious,” Idelle says.

“It’s going to bring us out of the red.” Max takes a moment, presses the cool plastic of the phone against her overheated forehead. “I don’t like it either, but she’ll ask us or somebody else. Don’t you want it to be us?”

Idelle, after much coaxing, finally agrees to go to the meeting next week, just to see exactly what Eleanor is asking from them. Max hangs up and buries her face in her hands. Her headache is back. He just left, but Max finds herself missing Silver’s company. He doesn’t demand anything from her.

Then she pulls herself together and takes a Tylenol. For a moment, she listens, hoping for the sound of windchimes, but the air is still today.

The meeting is scheduled for Thursday morning. It’s informal, Eleanor assures her, just an opportunity to flesh out expectations. Max is dreading it. She knows there’s no reason to be dreading it, that she’s perfectly capable of doing well in this meeting, but that doesn’t help. It just makes her fiercely embarrassed, that she’s still so caught up over something as stupid as an ex that she’s unenthusiastic about the best business opportunity she’s ever had in her life.

Wednesday night sees Max preparing obsessively for the meeting. She wonders if the mayor will actually be there. She wonders if he’ll get so angry with her, at this reminder of Eleanor’s rebellious phase, that the deal will fall through. That would be simple, wouldn’t it, if this choice was made for her?

At almost seven, Max decides that she can’t stand to look at her notes anymore. She gets in her car and drives around for a while, trying to think of something to do, somewhere to go, anything that will distract her from how fucking bone-deep embarrassed she’s been since Eleanor called her last week.

Entirely by chance, she finds herself at Danny’s Bar. She came here all the time when she first arrived in Missouri.  _ Why not,  _ she thinks, and pulls her car into the parking lot.

It’s the kind of place that is immediately familiar to Max. It smells like weed and cigarettes, the lights a little blurred with smoke, and people sit at the bar, their laughter buzzing with liquor. It’s surprisingly full for early on a weekday night, but, she supposes, there’s something enticing about the warmth of drunken company out of the November chill.

Familiar laughter rings across the floor, and Max turns to see, of all people, Silver standing behind the bar. He tosses her a wink as she enters, and Max can’t help smiling as she sits down.

“Hey, stranger,” he says. “What can I get ya?”

“Just some water,” Max says. “I have a big meeting early tomorrow.”

“Exciting.” Silver gives her a cup of water.

“Not really,” Max admits. Silver pours a beer for another customer and is back in front of Max in a second.

“Wanna talk?” he asks.

Max looks at the water in her cup. “No,” she says.

“All right,” Silver says. “Can I ask you a favor, then?”

“What?”

“Can I crash at your house?”

Max’s own laughter surprises her, making her choke on her water. She looks up at Silver. He doesn’t break his salesman’s smile, even as he slides away to serve someone else. He pours the man a shot of tequila and pushes it across the bar, saying, “Christ, Ronnie, don’t you have your hearing tomorrow?” Ronnie grunts and throws the shot back.

“Great guy, Ronnie,” Silver says, coming to rest again before Max. 

“Did the motel burn down?” Max asks.

“Depends on how you look at it,” Silver says, shrugging. He refills the peanut bowl and pushes it over to her. “I look at it as my car broke down, and the other guy working won’t let me carpool with him, because he lives on Walnut Road, which is like a half hour away from the motel, which you know because you live on Walnut Road. And also, the motel fucking sucks. So if you look at it that way, yeah, the motel burned down.”

Max eats a peanut. “Give me a dollar for the jukebox,” she says, “and I’ll think about it.”

Silver makes a face at her, but reaches over and takes a dollar from the tip jar. “Play Johnny Cash.”

The jukebox is four plays for a dollar. It’s been a long time since she last used this jukebox, but she still remembers its library almost instinctively, and she still knows the numbers for her favorite songs. Max picks out Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Waylon Jennings, and last, Johnny Cash.

Scratchy piano fills the space, and Max doesn’t move for a moment, swaying where she stands. 

When she slides back into her seat at the bar, Silver is looking at her expectantly. Max eats another peanut and looks back at him.

Silver breaks first. “So?” he says finally. “It won’t be for that long. I’ll pay half your rent.”

“I own my house,” Max replies.

“Then I’ll pay half your mortgage this month,” Silver says. His eyes flicker to the tip jar, which clearly isn’t as full as he’d like. “Or as much of half as I can.”

Max snorts. “I think you’re probably a shitty tenant,” she says. “But okay.”

Silver beams at her. “My shift ends at eight,” he says. 

It’s windy when they leave, the air cold and bracing. Max lights a cigarette to warm up, watching Silver carry his things from his dead car to Max’s trunk. She thinks about offering help, but she doubts he would accept it. In any case, he doesn’t really have much, just a suitcase and a few small plastic briefcases.

“Merchandise?” Max asks, watching him toss the briefcases into the trunk.

“Sold most of it already,” Silver replies. He closes the trunk. “At least, all the watches and fake shit. Got some new merchandise, though.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” Max starts the car, shooting him a wry look. Without a word, he pulls a joint out of his pocket. Max snorts and offers him her cigarette, and he uses it to light the joint. He leans back in his seat, taking a hit.

“Thanks,” Silver says. He rolls down the window as they pick up speed down the road. The cold air whips through the car, taking the smoke with it. 

It’s nice, speeding down the road, trees looming black and solid on either side of them, waning moon glimmering. The stinging cold wind is fucking up her hair, and Silver’s too. Silver cracks increasingly stupid jokes as he smokes his spliff, and before long, she’s not even trying to hold in her wild laughter.

When they pull into the driveway, they’re both red-cheeked with cold, curly hair disheveled, breathless with laughter. The wind is playing the windchimes loud and cheerful. Silver keeps coughing as he tries to make his point, but he can’t catch a proper breath long enough to speak.

“Take a goddamn breath, Silver,” Max says, laughing as she slams her door shut. Silver’s head pops up on the other side of the car. He points the roach at her reproachfully. She puts her hands up. “I didn’t make you smoke that.”

“I’m gonna finish your Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” he rasps. “And then we’re buying Froot Loops.” 

“I will evict you,” Max threatens. She tucks his plastic briefcases under one arm as he lugs his suitcase up the porch.

Her house does have a guest bedroom, but it’s never been used. Max leads Silver up the stairs and opens the door to find a layer of dust so thick it makes her cough.

“Gross,” Silver says from behind her.

“Shut up,” Max says. She turns on the light. The only thing in the room is the brass bedframe and the bare mattress that sits on it.

“Fucking awesome,” Silver says, coming into the room. “I’ll just make a pillow out of the dust. It’s like clouds.”

“What were you planning on if I didn’t walk in that bar?” Max says irritably. She goes to the hallway closet to get the bedding. She tosses a pillow over her shoulder, and knows from the muffled noise Silver makes that it hit its target.

“Sleeping in my car.” He doesn’t say it with any reproach, just the simple matter-of-factness of a man who has had to sleep in his car before. He hasn’t told her much about his life beyond the woman he came here for, but Max keeps getting the feeling that she’d recognize herself in his past if he ever told her about it. It’s for this reason that she doesn’t press him, just turns to him and thrusts sheets and blankets into his arms.

“I’ll go get the vacuum,” she says.

Silver bitches endlessly about having to waste his high making up his room instead of eating all the cereal in the kitchen. “Aren’t you from Louisiana? What about Southern fucking hospitality?” he shouts over the vacuum as he drags it over the floor. Max pretends she can’t hear him, making apologetic gestures as she retreats downstairs.

Max gets herself some chips from the kitchen and curls up on the couch to watch TV. There’s a nature documentary on. She doesn’t pay too much attention to what the narrator is saying, just admires the bright-colored birds, the songs they sing, high and twinkling like her windchimes. 

“She always liked these,” Silver says wistfully. “Documentaries.” Max looks up at him. He’s changed into clean clothes, but he clearly hasn’t washed or detangled his hair in a while, and the redness of his eyes make the dark circles underneath them more prominent.

“Have you seen her since Friday?” Max asks softly. Silver sits against the arm of the couch and seems to melt back into it, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling.

“No,” he says, sounding far away. “I don’t think she wants to see me again.”

Max nods slowly. “I’m glad you stayed anyway,” she offers.

“I’m not really anything without her,” Silver says distantly. “And she’s so much without me.”

When he says that, Max feels like she’s been hit in the chest. She thinks of the meeting tomorrow. She wishes she was too proud to take Eleanor’s deal.

“I think-” Silver swallows hard. “I think loving her is the best thing I ever did. And the crazy shit is that it doesn’t measure up to everything she can do. Everything she is.” He tilts his head forward to look at Max. “I think you understand that,” he says, and Max is suddenly overcome with it, seeing her own anguish reflected back at her so nakedly. There’s so many things she could tell him, things Idelle has told her before, things like  _ she isn’t better than you  _ or  _ putting her on a pedestal doesn’t do either of you any favors  _ or maybe even something like  _ you can still be someone without her,  _ but Max did not believe these things when Idelle said them to her and she knows Silver would not believe them now. To lie to him would be just like lying to herself. Max is many things, but she is not a hypocrite.

She reaches out and takes his hand, not knowing if she’s offering comfort or seeking some for herself or whether, with Silver, there is much of a difference. Silver rests his head on the back of the couch again, and he turns his palm up so that it’s pressed against hers.

Max changes the channel, browsing aimlessly for a while until Silver tells her to stop, his mouth full of chips he stole from her bowl. Max wrinkles her nose. It’s a slasher movie, and a poorly made one at that.

“I don’t like scary movies,” Max says. She always gets nightmares after watching horrors, although these nightmares are rarely about the movies themselves.

“Me neither,” Silver says, spraying crumbs. “But look how fake it is. Fucking Kool-Aid blood. Come on, it’s funny.”

At this exact moment, the white woman on the screen shrieks as an axe cuts through her shoulder. On the floor lands a false arm that’s just a shade too pale for the woman’s actual skin tone, and Max can’t stop the laughter bubbling up in her chest.

“See?” Silver says, victorious. So they watch a shitty slasher flick instead of the documentary, laughing at the awful props and screaming blondes. Kool-Aid blood doesn’t seem that bad with Silver crunching his chips obnoxiously loud next to her and laughing at the same times she does. 

Max has always preferred living alone, but it feels like the easiest thing in the world to fall asleep with Silver downstairs. She doesn’t dream, but she doesn’t have nightmares, either.

The meeting goes about as well as Max could hope. Richard Guthrie does not attend, sending one of his aides instead, but Sheriff Rogers does. Max refrains from needling him despite how easy it would be, considering the looks of barely-concealed contempt he gives her for the entire hour. Unfortunately for Eleanor, Max is the only person in attendance who is actually making the effort to be professional. Fortunately for Eleanor, Max is perfectly capable of being professional enough for everyone present, and by the end of the hour, even Woodes Rogers can’t find a decent reason that Crown Realty shouldn’t play a major role in the development initiative.

At least, not until Idelle opens her mouth.

“What about the community?” she asks.

“I’m sorry?” Eleanor and Rogers say in unison. Max gives Idelle a warning look.

“The community,” Idelle repeats, pointedly not looking at Max. “We’re talking about some really big changes. Who voted on this? Are you talking to community leaders?”

“We are the community leaders,” Guthrie’s aide says peevishly. 

“The community elected us to represent them,” Rogers agrees. “And this development will improve the community. Bring it into the twenty-first century, catch it up to the rest of the country.”

Idelle opens her mouth, looking furious, but Max speaks before Idelle gets a chance.

“So we should make sure that the community understands that,” Max says smoothly. “After all, Sheriff Rogers, like you said, you hold an elected office. So does Mayor Guthrie. I think it would be smart to involve some well regarded local leaders to take the temperature of public feeling. To make sure that you keep the votes you will need come election time.”

“She’s right,” Eleanor says quickly. “In a few months, we’re going to need to sell this to the town. We’ll need to make sure they’re willing to buy it.”

Rogers shrugs. “If you say so,” he says. “Why don’t you two find a community leader, then?” He pauses, a light coming on behind his eyes. “That’s very good, actually. A popular face to cosign everything.”

“Perfect,” Eleanor says, clapping once. “We’ve been productive today.” Already people are starting to pull on coats, glancing up at the clock, tossing away empty coffee cups and getting ready to head to the next meeting. Max says a hurried goodbye and hauls Idelle out into the hallway before Idelle can say anything else.

“What the fuck was that?” Idelle asks angrily. “Christ, Max.”

“Yeah, what the fuck was that?” Max hisses. They jostle into an elevator with three other people from the meeting and fall uncomfortably silent. They don’t speak again until they’re in the car, headed back to the office.

“I didn’t mean a popular face to cosign everything,” Idelle finally bursts out. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“I know,” Max says quietly, her eyes on the road. “I know you didn’t.”

Idelle laughs angrily. “So what the fuck?”

“Find someone who won’t be just a popular face,” Max says. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Idelle soften, just a little. “You grew up here. Who do you think really cares about the people here?”

“You mean-”

“I know you don’t like this,” Max says. “Find someone to make it a little easier for you.”

Idelle falls silent. She’s still not happy, but Max truly appreciates the effort she’s making.

The next few weeks are busy. The initiative is too new to actually require any of Crown Realty’s services, but Max involves herself heavily in the preparations and planning. To her great surprise, she finds that the world of business is much simpler and easier than she thought it would be. It’s all about understanding the people you’re dealing with, sizing them up in a second, and rearranging your approach to convince them that they want the same thing you want. Max has plenty of experience with that. 

Idelle and August are keeping themselves busy, too. Just the association between Crown Realty and the mayor’s office has done them good, and they’re bringing in more money than any of them expected for late autumn.

In the evenings, Max comes home to Silver clattering cheerfully around the house. It’s incredible how quickly he fits himself into her life, and even more surprising that she actually considers him a good presence. He makes the inane chores of living seem, if not joyful, then at least fun. He tells her silly stories about his day, and accompanies her to the grocery store even when she feels too tired to go. He takes to giving her little remnants from his day: a half-empty box of Tic-Tacs, a rhinestone bracelet abandoned by a customer, a cigarette he’d been saving for later. This bemuses Max at first, but Silver doesn’t seem to think anything of it, doesn’t even pause his story to acknowledge whatever it is he’s placed in her hand, so she takes the little tokens. Then she stops thinking anything of it, too, and it becomes simply another feature in their good little house, the tiny gifts Silver brings in from the world.

The cold winter wind blows early that year, whistling through the windchimes and making the old house groan. The leaves have long since fallen, and a blue frost starts to creep from the treetops right down into the hard ground. On the day that the first snow of the season falls, a Sunday, Max has made arrangements to meet with Idelle’s nominations for community representatives. For the first time in all the time Max has lived here, she pulls into the library parking lot.

The library is small and uncrowded. Idelle stands near the front desk, talking to the girl working there. They both look up when Max comes inside. Idelle’s face breaks into a smile, but the other woman’s doesn’t. The sharp cut of her jaw and cheekbones seems to tense slightly, but she doesn’t show much emotion beyond that. The air seems to cling to her, like she’s the center of gravity in the room, a heavy and watchful presence. She gets to her feet and holds out a hand for Max to shake.

“I’m Madi Scott,” the woman says. “Max Dauphin?”

“Max, please,” Max says, grasping Madi’s hand. “It’s good to meet you.”

Madi leads Idelle and Max to a side room, where an older woman sits squinting at a computer. Her skin is lighter than Madi’s, but Max can see where Madi got her high, severe cheekbones. Idelle makes the introductions.

“Mrs. Scott, Max,” Idelle says. “Max, this is Mrs. Scott. She’s been a librarian here for almost twenty years. Long as I can remember. She helped me get my GED.” Mrs. Scott smiles at her, and Idelle returns it with equal warmth. “I think she’s who we’re looking for.”

“Remind me what you’re looking for?” Madi says, her voice a little sharp. “Help with gentrifying this whole town?”

“Madi,” Mrs. Scott says. This one word is apparently enough, and Madi subsides.

Max folds her hands delicately, trying to think of how to frame the request. Mrs. Scott is clearly willing to hear her out, but she doesn’t seem any more thrilled by the idea of the initiative than Madi does. 

“We are working on an effort to improve the town,” Max says carefully. “There’s a lot of excitement from the mayor’s office, and we’re having good luck reaching out to investors so far. There’s a lot of change coming. What we’re looking for is people who are a little more in touch with the needs of the community, to make sure nothing too important changes too fast.”

“More in touch with the needs of the community than our Mayor Guthrie,” remarks Mrs. Scott.

“Exactly,” Max says. “A direct line into his ear, to make sure he doesn’t go too far.”

Mrs. Scott regards her. “Am I supposed to be the only voice of the community?” she asks. “There’s a lot, you know.”

“Your position is more of a check on the initiative,” Max says. “So you can make the negotiations transparent, demand to hold a town hall or even a referendum. Believe me, Mrs. Scott, this town will be better off with your influence on it. If you don’t, Sheriff Rogers and his wife will pick out someone else, and they’ll be about as popular as the mayor.”

It seems to take a moment for the fact that Max has just insulted the mayor to sink in. Madi laughs first, delightedly, and Mrs. Scott cracks a grudging smile.

“Why don’t you tell me more about this initiative,” she says, “and I’ll tell you how much I can stand being part of it.”

Max does her best to describe it in the best possible light, but it’s clear that neither mother nor daughter have any fondness for the idea, and nothing Max can say will persuade them otherwise. Max doesn’t really blame them. Each question they ask or observation they make pokes holes in it. Still, Max keeps coming back to the same point: if they don’t do it, someone else will, and they will do it worse.

The meeting goes on much longer than Max thought it would. The sun is starting to set, as it does so early these days, when Mrs. Scott finally deems the conversation over for the day. Max, feeling thoroughly tired out by the discussion, is more than ready to go home and let Silver amuse her for a while. On her way out, though, she sees Madi putting on her coat, and thinks better of it.

“Going home?” Max asks, stopping in front of the desk.

“Yeah,” Madi says, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “My mom is going to stay late to work.”

“Let’s get some coffee,” Max suggests. “Unwind a little.”

Madi looks at her. “We just talked for three hours,” she says, amused. “You want to talk more?”

“Yes,” Max says. It almost surprises her to find that this is true. Yes, it would help her cause if Madi liked her a little more, but Max also, very simply, wants to get to know her better. For all three hours of the meeting, Madi spoke sparingly, but every sentence that came out of her mouth was concise and cutting, right to the point.

She thinks Madi is going to refuse her, but then she shrugs. “Okay,” Madi says. “Follow me.”

Madi is a slow driver. This makes sense, since it’s still snowing and the sun is going down and the visibility is shit, but Max is so used to driving with Silver egging her on in the passenger seat that it feels a little strange to go below the speed limit. Max decides not to hold it against her.

They end up in the parking lot of a diner. The snow is fine and wet, just barely this side of frozen, the kind that slides down your neck and into your gloves. There’s no wind to speak of, and the sky is a dark, bruised gray. The weather is putting Max in such a bad mood she almost regrets her invitation. She’s idly thinking of excuses to leave as they step inside the diner when Madi takes off her hat, brushes cold droplets from her sleeves, and smiles faintly. “Nasty weather,” she comments, and then goes inside, serene as ever.

There’s something striking about that, Madi’s calmness. It’s utterly uncontrived, unshaken by anything so unstable as shitty weather. Max notices it, but doesn’t quite know what to do with it. She files it away for now.

They sit in a booth together, Max stirring milk and sugar into her coffee as Madi sips hers black.

“So what made you sign onto this initiative?” Madi says the word  _ initiative _ with just a touch of amusement.

“I’ve had enough politics for one afternoon,” Max says, waving a hand. 

Madi lifts an eyebrow. “Okay,” she says, sounding even more amused. “So what would you like to talk about?”

“How do you know Idelle?” Max asks, for lack of anything else to say.

“We grew up here,” Madi says, as if this is explanation enough, as if being children under the same sky is of course enough to forge love. “You?”

“We worked together,” Max says after a moment. “It was her and her husband’s investment that got the company off the ground, actually.”

Madi studies her. Max knows what it looks like when someone is trying very hard to figure her out, and she offers Madi nothing but a placid smile.

“How long has it been?” Madi asks. “Since starting the company?”

“About a year and a half.” Max lets a real smile cross her face. “We’re doing very well.”

Madi snorts. “I’m sure.” She drinks from her coffee cup. “Did you move here for real estate? Or for your… initiative?” she asks, too innocently. Max stares at her, and realizes that Madi knows much more about her than she let on.

Max refuses to let herself be embarrassed. She sets down her mug and lifts her chin. “I guess you know why I moved here,” she says.

Madi shrugs, unashamed. “I used to be Eleanor’s best friend in the world,” she admits. “And the entire town has been gossiping about the mayor’s daughter for years.” She doesn’t say any of this vindictively. She just says it like a simple truth, which, Max supposes, it is. 

“I’m just wondering if you’re doing all this for you or her,” Madi adds, in that calm, concise way of hers.

Max raises her mug to her lips. “Does it matter?” 

“Yes,” Madi says simply. How very many times Madi has surprised Max in one afternoon. How very unused to being surprised she is.

“Let me worry about that, then,” Max says finally. Madi nods slowly, like that’s a good enough answer for her. Then she sips her coffee.

“Where’d you move from?” she asks.

“New Orleans,” says Max, and watches familiar interest flicker on Madi’s face. Max thinks Madi is going to ask more about Max’s past, but she doesn’t. Madi asks about the city, the food, the music, the celebrations. She asks how the city compares to such a small town, if Max feels more or less of a sense of community, what she thinks about urbanization and gentrification and culture across Middle America. She asks about music, about Max’s favorites, about what she grew up listening to, about the blues and the folk and the country of the Ozarks and how it compares to the swing of New Orleans. Max isn’t used to conversations like this, conversations that require more than a simple evaluation of what the other person wants to hear. She has to think carefully about her answers. Madi replies to everything she says thoughtfully, as if she’s really considering what Max said.

Eleanor talked something like this, Max recalls suddenly. Years ago. But she’d never been quite so invested in what Max had to say, and Max had always been happy to listen.

Max thinks she much prefers this.

* * *

What kind of happiness do you foresee for me? Paint me the picture of your happy Antigone. What are the unimportant little sins that I shall have to commit before I am allowed to sink my teeth into life and tear happiness from it? Tell me: to whom shall I have to lie? upon whom shall I have to fawn? to whom must I sell myself? Whom do you want me to leave dying, while I turn away my eyes?

-Jean Anouilh,  _ Antigone _


	4. iv. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 1999

On the flip side there are masses of children who grow up confident love is a good feeling who are never punished, who are allowed to believe that love is only about getting your needs met, your desires satisfied. In their child’s mind love is not about what they have to give, love is mostly something given to them.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _

* * *

Max loves her new house.

No, it isn’t technically hers, and yes, it’s more of a hut than a house. It’s tiny: one floor, one bathroom, one bedroom. But it’s bigger than the apartment she’d had in Louisiana, and it’s Eleanor’s, and that is enough for Max to love it. It’s on a secluded part of the river. She imagines herself sitting on the back porch in the mornings, watching the water rush by cold and blue, sipping her coffee and waiting for Eleanor to wake up. She imagines coming inside, splitting the newspaper with Eleanor and trading sections to read as the radio croons guitar and a smoke-throated singer. She imagines kissing a sweet goodbye at the front door as Eleanor drives off to her nonprofit (yet to be founded) and Max heads to her real estate agency (also yet to be founded). She imagines cooking dinner together in the kitchen, laughing, pressed shoulder to shoulder over the stove. She imagines lazy sex on the couch, windows open, the smell of sweat and perfume and cigarettes washed away and replaced by the clean blue smell of the river.

All of these things have yet to happen, of course, as they have just pulled Max’s car into the driveway, and Eleanor has only just straightened up from the welcome mat where the keys were hidden. But as Eleanor waves the keys gleefully over her head, all of this and more flashes before Max’s eyes.

For now, the January cold chases them inside before they even unpack Max’s things from the car. Eleanor makes them coffee as Max presses fingers to the cold windowpane. It’s snowing out. Max has never seen anything like it, fat snowflakes swirling to the ground and landing in thick white beds that look deceptively warm. Max doesn’t realize how long she’s been standing at the window until Eleanor pulls her away, laughs at her blue nails and cold fingers.

“Warm up, Max,” Eleanor says, pressing the coffee mug into her hands. “We have to unpack before the car freezes shut.” She kisses Max’s forehead and leaves her standing pensively at the window. What a place this is, where a car, warm and rumbling only an hour ago, could freeze to the spot.

They carry the boxes in. Eleanor has already been living here since she graduated from school last summer, so Max doesn’t feel a pressure to fill the space full of lived-inness, to make her mark on this nice new house. Eleanor has already done that. All Max has to do is slot herself in beside her.

On the first night, they lie together on the bed as they have done so many times before. Their bodies curve towards each other, noses just a few inches apart, legs tangled together. The space between them is different now. The sheets are blue and soft. Eleanor talks quietly about the future, and Max is too tired to listen closely. She lets the words wash over her gently.

“I’m still working for my dad’s company,” Eleanor murmurs. “I’ll make connections. Save up. Get the nonprofit off the ground while you get your real estate license. You know how close we are, Max? You know how close we are?”

Max knows exactly how close they are. She has never been this close before.

Life in Missouri isn’t quite how Max was imagining it. It’s too cold to sit on the porch, and Eleanor is often awake and leaving for work before Max even wakes up. When Max isn’t at her classes, she’s at home. It unnerves her. There is, at any given moment, not a single person within shouting distance. When Eleanor is at work, Max is utterly alone. At home, in the city, there is the ebb and flow of human bustle right outside the window, light pollution casting a glow over the sky. Here, the landscape is empty of people, but alive with constant noise. The river crashes by unendingly. The nights bring darkness, true darkness as Max has never seen it, except when the moon deigns to shine, and the forests are black and alive with inhuman things just beyond the treeline. When it storms, the wind howls, the trees groan, as if crowing their success at confining humanity in little boxes, miles apart from one another. 

It is dark here. It is cold. It is lonely. In the heat of New Orleans, Eleanor’s cool hands were a relief, a cold press against flushed, sweating skin. Here, Max feels that all the warmth is being leached from her by the air itself.

Still, she tries. The weather is no reason to give up on a place, she thinks to herself, derisive of her own discomfort. She asks Eleanor, one night, if everything is all right. She isn’t so wrapped up in her discontent that she can’t see that Eleanor hasn’t been exactly happy either.

“I’m okay,” Eleanor says slowly, in a way that means she isn’t okay. Max puts her face in the crook of Eleanor’s neck, and she breathes the familiar smell. She feels Eleanor’s hands settle on her back, and for a moment, they sit like that, Eleanor still in her work clothes, Max straddling her on the couch.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Max says finally. She pulls away just enough to make eye contact with Eleanor. She puts gentle hands on Eleanor’s face, the pads of her thumbs brushing over dark circles under ice-blue eyes.

“It’s nothing,” Eleanor says. She continues anyway, without hesitation. Eleanor is not the kind of woman who feels like nothing. “I’m trying to get everything together. The resources. The connections. Investors. But that’s taking a while, and my dad’s not paying my rent anymore. You know, bills, insurance, all that shit, I have to pay for everything myself now.” She doesn’t say it, but Max hears it:  _ I have to pay for you myself now. _ “It’s going to take a long time to get this nonprofit running. And your agency. A long time.”

“How long?” Max asks hesitantly.

Eleanor shrugs. “At least three years,” she says. “Maybe more.”

The idea of sitting alone in this house for three years while Eleanor works is unbearable.

“I’ll work, then,” Max says, her mind already made up. Eleanor’s face falls.

“No,” she says firmly. “I brought you here so you wouldn’t have to-”

“I came here to be with you,” Max corrects. “I came here to build something. And I want to build it.”

Eleanor kisses Max, cold fingers pressing under her shirt and into hot, soft skin. Max lets her.

It’s not hard getting a job at a club. It’s almost a half hour’s drive, which Eleanor would consider close by if Max offered any information about it. She doesn’t, though, and Eleanor doesn’t ask, so Max drives a half hour there and a half hour back five nights a week. 

So this becomes Max’s new life. She sleeps late, and Eleanor is already gone when she wakes. During the day, she studies for her licensing exam. In the afternoons, Eleanor comes home, and they eat dinner together. Max gets dressed for work as Eleanor changes into nightclothes, and they kiss goodbye around 8 P.M.

To Max’s relief, the club is easy to get accustomed to. The people are different, the music is different, the floor is different, but what matters hasn’t changed. There’s the same hour in the changing room, the same laughter, the same smells. Max doesn’t intend to make connections, not at first. She brings her own makeup and gets ready in the corner. But on her third night, a girl who calls herself Charlotte offers Max a cigarette, already lit, the butt smeared with pink lipgloss, and Max’s chest aches.

She takes the cigarette. “Thanks,” she says.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Charlotte says, smile warm and crinkling. “I know it’s scary the first few days. You gonna be okay, though. With that body? Just shake it around a little. World’s gonna be at your feet.”

The income from the club is more regular than she expects. This, too, is a relief. In New Orleans, a good night was eight or nine hundred, but the bad nights came far more frequently, and on those she might make twenty or less. A few times, in the early days, she’d ended the night with less than she’d had that morning, unable to make back the house fee. Those had been the worst times, sixteen in the middle of the summer, making her way home with her vision tunneling with exhaustion.

Here, though, in a small town, where almost every client is a regular, her nightly income is more stable. Never more than $250, but never less than $100. It wouldn’t be enough if Eleanor wasn’t paying her bills, or if she had children, or debt to pay off or an addiction to feed or ailing relatives to care for, and as always, plenty of the other girls are struggling to do just that. But all Max is paying for is her classes and her cigarettes, so her cash savings pile up. 

It’s hard to celebrate this with Eleanor. Max can tell it’s wearing on her, spending so much time around her father. Eleanor has been coming home later, her eyes tired, snapping at Max for no reason. Max is patient with her. This life is an improvement for Max, but it’s a step down for Eleanor. So Max tries very hard to be sensitive, tries to empathize with how Eleanor feels, tries to understand what it’s like to still be growing up at the age of twenty-three.

On the day Max gets the results from her licensing exam back, Eleanor comes home with a stormcloud hovering above her head. The first word out of her mouth when she walks in the door is a furious one.

“I’m so fucking sick of my dad.” Eleanor throws her bag to the floor and sinks onto the couch. It’s almost 6:30 P.M.

“It’s okay, cheri,” Max says, soothing. “Tell me what happened.”

“He doesn’t listen to a single goddamn word out of my mouth,” Eleanor says angrily. She drops her head to her hands. “I mean, he comes to board meetings once a month. I’m giving my presentation, and the whole time he’s making these fucking comments about everything.” She laughs shrilly. “Not even about the presentation. He actually brought up the allowance he gave me in college. What goddamn business is it of the  _ entire company  _ if I got an allowance in college?”

Max rubs Eleanor’s back, not saying anything. Eleanor’s griefs are usually fleeting; she needs only to retch it all up like bad seafood.

“How are they supposed to respect me like this? Everything he says makes me look like an idiot,” Eleanor fumes. She looks up at Max despairingly. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“I know, love,” Max says gently. “But you are just starting out. You always pay your dues first.”

“But-” Eleanor cuts herself off. Then, abruptly, she gets up and goes to the kitchen. Max can hear her banging around angrily. Max takes the exam results from her pocket. She’d been so excited to get it that she’d ripped it open outside by the mailbox.

“How was your day, then?” Eleanor shouts from the kitchen.

“I got the exam results back,” Max answers. Eleanor appears in the doorframe, eating a sandwich.

“Did you pass?” she asks.

“92%,” Max says. 

“Nice,” Eleanor says. She goes back to the kitchen.

Max wants to keep talking, wants to tell her how half of the people who take the test fail the first time around, how she overshot the passing score by over 20%. But that feels needy, and Max doesn’t like begging for praise, so she puts the paper back in her pocket. Eleanor did, after all, graduate a four-year university summa cum laude. 

“I’m a licensed real estate agent,” Max says. Eleanor doesn’t hear her. 

Suddenly, Max can’t stand being in this tiny fucking house one second longer, can’t stand listening to the rushing river anymore. She packs her bag quickly, and yells over her shoulder, “I’m going to work!”

“Bye! Love you!” Eleanor calls back. There it is, the lightness returned to her tone, all the troubles vomited out and cleaned from her delicate stomach. 

“Love you too,” Max grinds out, and leaves before she can say anything else.

She doesn’t know where she’s going. Her shift doesn’t start until 9 P.M. Suddenly she misses home fiercely, although she isn’t sure which home she’s pining for, whether it’s New Orleans or Port-au-Prince. She only knows that she has never been somewhere that she could drive twenty minutes without seeing another soul, without hearing music or laughter. Max has never considered herself an extrovert, but then, she has never felt so lonely as she does now. The cold night is cloudy and silent, the silver glow of the moon blurred, the dark of the forest on either side oppressive.

She pulls into the first open establishment she sees, a bar. Two of the letters have gone dead, so it looks like  _ Dan y’s Ba _ . But the windows are open, and spilling out golden light and warmth and laughter, so Max doesn’t think twice.

It’s a Friday night, so the bar is already crowded despite the early hour. There’s a stage towards the back of the bar, and on it stands a pudgy little man, strumming a guitar. He’s not very good. Nobody is paying attention to him, except one familiar woman sitting alone at a table staring raptly at him. 

“Sharona?” Max says, stepping forward. The woman looks up. It takes a moment for her to recognize Max, but when she does, she smiles, easy and open.

“Idelle out here,” she says. She kicks the chair beside her, giving Max room to sit. She does.

“Max.”

“Working tonight?” Idelle says, nodding at Max’s bag.

“Yes,” Max says. “You?”

Idelle nods, turning her attention back to the man onstage. “My shift lined up perfect,” she says, a note of pride in her voice. “He’s the opening act tonight.”

“He doesn’t do this for a living, right?” Max asks apprehensively. Idelle glowers playfully.

“He’s an accountant,” Idelle says. Then she laughs. “I started out just fucking him so he’d do my taxes for free.” She sighs. “Love creeps up on you, huh?”

Max huffs out a breath of laughter. “Never met a dancer that did her taxes,” she says truthfully.

Idelle taps her temple. “For the tax returns,” she says wisely.

Max hums. They sit companionably, watching Idelle’s boyfriend play badly. There’s something about how fondly Idelle looks at him, how proud she is of this little accomplishment that makes Max ache.

“Do you think he’d do my taxes?” Max asks suddenly.

“Sure,” Idelle says easily. “Not for free, though. That’s just for people he’s fucking.”

Max laughs. “Of course,” she says. 

After the set, Idelle’s boyfriend joins them at the table, grinning ear to ear. “How was I?” he asks Idelle.

“Perfect, baby,” Idelle says, and she sounds like she actually means it. 

They leave soon after, August driving in one direction, Max and Idelle driving in the other. They walk into the club arm in arm, sharing a cigarette.

Idelle and August spend almost every night at Danny’s Bar, and before long, Max joins them. They’re fun, simple people. They don’t spend all their time wishing desperately to be people other than themselves, and that’s a nice change. August does her taxes, and then he helps her find a job at a local real estate agency. Idelle goes outside with her during her smoke breaks, is sweet and lovely and easy to talk to. Max doesn’t talk about her life until Idelle asks, which it takes her several weeks to do. But when she does, Max tells her. 

Eleanor had looked at her with pity. Idelle doesn’t. She only rests a hand on Max’s shoulder, with the same affection and pride she’d held watching August with his guitar.

“I’m glad you got here,” Idelle says.

So, slowly, winter relinquishes its hold. Max has friends again, a spot at Danny’s Bar among a circle of laughing people. Between the day job and the few shifts a week at the club, she’s putting away more money than she’s ever had in her entire life. She asks August how he feels about the viability of a realty startup, and he lights up like he’s been waiting for her to ask. The Ozarks seem friendlier now, with new green leaves growing on the trees and the sunlight warm and golden.

It’s all so close she can taste it.

In the spring, even Eleanor seems to be making an effort. She makes lemonade and they sit on the back porch to sip it. The lemonade is too sour, and it’s still a little cold out for porch-sitting, but Max appreciates it anyway. She recognizes Eleanor’s affection when she sees it, and really, there’s nothing that matches it better than the cold blue river and the high, proud forest.

Eleanor even suggests that they invite August and Idelle for dinner. Max searches her face for reluctance, but doesn’t find any. It might be a disaster. But it might be perfect. Max throws caution to the wind and invites August and Idelle for dinner.

They host it on a Sunday night, since Idelle and Max work on Saturday nights. Idelle and August come in all smiles, toting a six-pack of beer. The first hour of the night is wonderful, Max’s three favorite people in Missouri getting along together. Eleanor is terribly proud of the lasagna she’s made, and Idelle and August compliment the chef. Max isn’t drinking, but there’s a warmth deep in her belly all the same, seeing Eleanor’s laughing eyes and Idelle’s flushed smile. For the first time, the ever-present babble of the river sounds cheerful.

Max has been mostly quiet, listening to the conversation as it rambles on. She’s a little surprised when August turns to her and says, “That reminds me, actually. What were you saying last week? About your plan for the agency? It was really smart, I was telling Idelle...”

Three faces watch her expectantly, and despite her surprise, Max starts talking. It’s still vague, but she tells them about her ideas of a two-winged company, one devoted to tourists, like most other real estate agencies in the area, and the other targeting the residents of the town. Specifically young adults, she adds, who tend to live with their parents longer in this area. She speaks confidently, because she knows it’s a good idea. She and August carry on like this for a few minutes, talking excitedly about their plans for the agency, before Idelle cuts in with a fond eye roll and a hand on August’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” August says, ducking his head to press a quick kiss to Idelle’s knuckle. She smiles back: forgiveness.

“How long did it take you to get your real estate license?” Idelle muses to Max. “I’m thinking-”

“I didn’t know you had such a head for business.” Eleanor doesn’t seem to notice she’s interrupted Idelle, and she’s staring at Max like she’s never seen her before.

“Well, you never asked, cheri,” Max says lightly. She’s turning back to Idelle when Eleanor speaks again.

“Why just do real estate, then?” Eleanor asks, still looking stunned. “I mean, you could probably do any job at the company. Why settle for-” She stops, apparently unable to say what she means, but she doesn’t need to. Everyone in the room already knows what she means. The silence left by her words is flat and unpleasant.

“For what?” Idelle says coolly.

“I don’t want any job at the company,” Max says delicately. “I only want a nice life here, with you.” She doesn’t want this dinner to devolve, not when it all had been going so well. She reaches out to touch Eleanor’s shoulder, trying to make peace, but for all Eleanor reacts, she may as well have been touching stone.

For another tense moment, Eleanor stares wordlessly back at her. Then she seems to shake herself. She looks at Idelle and August and smiles weakly. “Still learning things about her years later,” she says.

Slowly, the conversation builds up again, almost as it was before. Max can tell Idelle is still rankling at Eleanor’s words, though, and Eleanor keeps stealing looks at Max as if she’s wondering who has replaced her partner. Idelle and August leave almost immediately after they finish eating, for which Max is grateful. She hugs them at the door, and all of them silently agree not to mention the fact that Eleanor did not come to the door to bid them goodbye.

Quietly, Eleanor and Max clean up. Max washes the dishes as Eleanor wipes the table down. They’ve gone through this routine many times, but it’s never usually so silent between them.

But Max is nothing if not patient, and Eleanor is nothing if not verbal. If Eleanor still has something to say, Max will wait for her to say it.

“I hope I didn’t embarrass you at dinner,” Eleanor says finally. They’re in bed. Max closes her book and looks up at Eleanor expectantly. “I just… I’ve never heard you talk like that.”

“And you think I’m settling?” Max asks.

“I mean-” Eleanor shrugs helplessly. “What else do you call it when you decide not to live up to your potential?”

Max sighs. She has been thinking of how to say this all evening. “I’m not you,” Max says simply. “I was not born for power or money. You have always had the luxury of changing the world, cheri.” Eleanor opens her mouth, but Max places a hand on her arm. “Let me finish.”

Eleanor closes her mouth and nods. Max continues.

“I admire you very much,” she says. “Really. I have always loved your grace. The way you move through the world. Like it owes you something, instead of you owing it. But I have been paying my whole life just for being born. I have to reach zero before I can take something back. Do you understand?”

Eleanor nods slowly. “Yeah,” she says. “I do. But sometimes I think the world does owe me something. If my father had a son, he would probably be running the company by now.”

Max wraps her arms around Eleanor and pulls her close. Eleanor rests her head on Max’s shoulder. They don’t talk again that night, Eleanor having said all she wanted to say.

* * *

WHITE WOMAN   
REACHES HER   
ARM DOWN MY   
THROAT TUCKS   
HER   
CONFESSION IN   
THE LINING OF   
MY STOMACH   
ABSOLVES   
HERSELF OF   
HER SINS

-Charlotte Zhang


	5. v. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2002

I didn’t like being on my own as much as I liked being friends with her. It was never about getting famous enough to survive on your own. I preferred surviving with her.

-Trixie Mattel

* * *

Ever since Silver got his car back from the mechanic, he’s been coming in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night. He sleeps irregularly, sometimes three or four hours when he gets home from the bar, sometimes all day, sometimes, even, twenty minutes on the couch between conversations. His complete lack of routine should bother her, and at first it does. She offers him a job at the agency in an attempt to instill some kind of schedule, but then he looks at her like she’s crazy. “Why would I want that?” he asks, nonplussed. “I love my job.”

“You don’t have a job,” Max says. “You’re a drug dealer.”

“Exactly,” Silver says. “I’m everybody’s best friend. And I don’t have to pay taxes.”

That’s fair enough. Max supposes not everyone’s freedom looks the same. She decides to let it go.

Slowly, plans for the development initiative take shape as the town freezes over. It’s slow in part because of Mrs. Scott and Madi, who have inserted themselves into every step of the negotiations. Woodes Rogers grumbles endlessly about this, and Max has to keep reminding him that the next election happens in two years, right when they plan to be in the middle of development, and the community’s receptiveness is critical to holding his office.

“I understand,” Rogers says, with a false kind of patience that he means to be polite but is only condescending. “But, you know, they are being paid very well to make the process easier, not longer.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Woodes,” Eleanor snaps. “They’re on retainer, doing the exact job they’re on retainer for. Compromise a little more and they won’t have to log so many hours.”

Frankly, Max isn’t sure Madi has any more interest in compromising than Rogers does. They’ve taken to spending time together, coffee breaks and lunch at the diner, and it’s almost immediately clear that Madi is not the compromising type. Max is and always has been the compromising type, but Madi doesn’t reject this outright.

They’ve just come out of a meeting about the viability of a luxury housing development on the river. Mrs. Scott didn’t come to this meeting, so Madi was the sole voice of real opposition. Max spent the entire meeting trying to play mediator between Rogers and Madi, who’d been almost snarling at each other by the time the hour came to a close. Madi is still visibly fuming when they come out of the meeting. Not visibly to others, perhaps, but Max can tell, the tightness in her jaw, the heaviness in her brow, the way her grip is white-knuckled on her bag.

“Still want to get lunch?” Max asks, falling into step beside Madi.

“Yeah.” Madi’s voice is clipped. Max lets her be, and by the time they reunite at the door of the diner, Madi looks a little more relaxed.

“How do you stand it?” Madi asks tiredly as they wait for their order. She pulls the tie from her hair, letting her locs spill over her shoulders. 

“Stand what?” Max thinks she already knows what Madi means. But Madi wants to vocalize something, she can tell, so Max waits.

“The way they treat you. The way they treat us,” Madi says. Her dark eyes, as always, are focused but warm, watching Max like she’s intent on understanding what she sees. “It never shakes you. I don’t think I could do your job.”

“Yes, you could,” Max says, lifting an eyebrow. “But you wouldn’t.”

“No,” Madi says after a moment. “I wouldn’t.” She looks out the window. It’s frosted and foggy, and the bare trees on the other side of the road sway in a whispering wind. All cold and blue, this time of year.

“I went to grad school, you know. I loved it. My advisor called it groundbreaking work,” Madi says pensively. She rests her chin in her hand and looks back at Max. “I could have stayed and got a Ph.D. But I didn’t. I couldn’t stand it anymore, working surrounded by white people who wrote with one hand and jerked off with the other. Who talked down at me and my work. How can you still stand it?” She doesn’t say any of this with conceit, and she doesn’t ask her final question with derision or condescension. It’s an honest question, and Max takes a long moment to think on her answer.

“I guess I don’t,” Max says slowly. “I don’t think anyone could stand that. I don’t try. I just smile and tell them what they want to hear, and they don’t even realize that I got just as much from them as they got from me.”

“Sounds lonely,” Madi remarks. For no reason at all, Max thinks of Silver, a man who melted into existence on her porch, without a friend in the world but some nameless woman who didn’t want him, nothing to his name but a smile and the knowledge of what a stranger wants to hear.

“Not when you have good friends,” Max says.

Madi smiles. Max feels a little victorious at that. Madi doesn’t smile when she doesn’t feel like smiling, and earning one from her is high praise.

“That’s the truth,” Madi agrees. “Oh, I wanted to ask you. We’re doing a poetry night at the library on Saturday. This woman who’s been coming to the library since she was a kid just published an anthology, so we’re supporting her. Do you want to come?”

Max has never read poetry. She’s never really understood the fuss over it. “Sure,” Max says. “That sounds nice.”

When Max gets home that day, Silver’s car isn’t in the driveway. She remembers that he told her he would be working the late shift at the bar tonight, but it’s still early, so he’s probably making deliveries. It always takes him all day, because he can never just drop off the weed. He makes conversation, talks his way into getting free food or little gifts or interesting stories. Max doesn’t mind. He’s making more than enough money to cover his half of the household expenses, not to mention the fact that it’s because of Silver that Max now knows every bit of gossip that this town has to offer.

Max eats dinner, and around 9 P.M., she goes to Danny’s. Silver has only been staying with her about a month and a half, but she’s gotten used to talking to him every day.

Danny’s is, as always, smokey and warm against the winter cold. It’s relatively empty tonight. A woman and a man play pool. Two or three booths are occupied. Two men sit at the bar, smoking and nursing their drinks. Silver is leaning against the bar, talking enthusiastically with one of the men. When he looks up and sees her, his big salesman’s smile fades, and is replaced by something quieter. He doesn’t shout his greeting to her, not like he used to, doesn’t beam and wave and wink anymore. But Max sees some tension slip from his shoulders, sees his pinned-on smile give out, and she knows he’s happy to see her. That makes her feel better about how happy she is to see him.

Max sits at the bar to wait for Silver to finish with the customer. It takes barely ten seconds.

“You’ll never believe what I found out today,” he says in lieu of a greeting. 

“Tell me,” Max says, taking the glass of water he poured for her.

“You know the guy who runs the grocery store? Tells people his daughter’s at college?” Silver leans close. “She’s not at college. She married a fucking Mormon and moved to Utah.”

“Really?” Max asks, laughing. “How do you know?”

“Her cousin,” Silver says. As he speaks, he slides a harmonica over the bar. Max picks it up. It’s heavier than it looks. “Cool guy. Plays like ten different instruments in four different bands. Smokes a half-ounce a week.”

“Nice of him to pay your rent,” Max says, studying the harmonica. Experimentally, she blows into it. It’s louder than she expected it to be, and Silver laughs.

“Stick to real estate,” he advises.

“Fuck off,” Max replies.

He laughs and moves away to refill a customer’s glass. Max drinks her water and listens to the quiet guitar music and the clink of cue balls. She lights a cigarette, and without being asked, Silver slides an ashtray over to her.

“How’s the ex?” Silver says. This is his way of demonstrating interest in her job. She doesn’t often bring it home. It’s tiring, and boring sometimes even to her. But Silver has started asking her about it. He has an unnerving knack for asking on days when she feels particularly disillusioned or sad.

Max shrugs. “Still married to an asshole,” she says. “Not that I care.”

“Not that you care,” Silver agrees.

Max taps her cigarette against the ashtray. “Everything is going really slow,” she says. “Which is better for me.”

“Doesn’t that just mean it will take longer for them to hire the agency?” Silver asks.

“Yes.” Max points her cigarette at him. “But it also means I’ll be paid longer as a consultant. And I’ll have more time to make more connections with the companies and politicians they’re talking to.”

Silver whistles. “Look at you,” he says. “Taking over. One Ozark at a time.”

“One Ozark?” Max asks. 

“You know.” Silver leans back and lights a cigarette for himself, blowing smoke at Max. “We’re in the Ozarks. As in, many Ozarks. Gotta take over one before you take over the rest.”

“You are an idiot,” Max says, laughing despite herself.

He smiles at her, small and genuine, before he moves away to serve a customer. When he comes back, he leans on the bar, chin in his hands, and says, “What do you think of Christmas?”

“Not much,” Max says truthfully. It’s next week. “Do you want to do something?”

Silver shrugs. “No,” he says. “Just wanted to know if you did. Since we won’t have work that day.”

“We can celebrate not having work that day,” Max says, and Silver laughs.

“What celebration?” he asks. “Smoking and ordering food? Like every other night?”

“Exactly,” Max says.

“I like where your head’s at,” Silver says, nodding sagely. Plans made, he moves away to refill another customer’s drink.

Behind her, Max hears the door open, and icy air floods in. She doesn’t look up, taking a drag of her cigarette to avoid breathing in the cold. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Silver break into a smile.

“Hey, Vane!” he yells.

It takes a moment for the name to register, but the low voice that replies is unmistakable. “Silver,” Vane grunts as he sits down, not four feet away from her. Accompanying him is a pale man with dark hair. Vane hasn’t noticed her yet, and Max angles herself away from him slightly, so he won’t see her face.

Silver talks cheerfully with Vane and his friend for a few moments as he pours them beers. Max is trying to figure out how to leave without Vane noticing her. He’ll make a scene if he does, she knows, and she really would rather just go home than go through this all over again.

“You know that batshit old guy who- are you okay?” Silver looks at her with something like concern on his face. It really isn’t fair how good he’s gotten at reading her, Max thinks, and she gives him a tight smile.

“I’m gonna go,” she says. “Work tomorrow.”

“It’s still early,” Silver says, frowning. His eyes flicker to where Vane sits with the other man and back to Max. Understanding dawns on his face, and he lowers his voice. “Do you guys have a… thing?”

“What? No,” Max says, a little insulted. “Christ, Silver-”

“I didn’t mean like that,” Silver says, waving a hand. “I just meant, you know, he told me he used to fuck around with Eleanor, and, you know, you did too. Honestly, though, your taste is so bad-”

“That’s enough,” Max snaps. “Yes, thanks, I know I used to fuck around with Eleanor. Why do you know everybody in this goddamn town?”

“I’m charming,” Silver says, trying for a smile. Max rolls her eyes. “Okay, okay.” Silver puts his hands up in defeat. “I can get him to leave, if you want.” He looks completely sincere. Oddly, it’s this sincerity that makes Max relax slightly.

“No, it’s okay,” Max mutters. She shoves the harmonica in her bag and snuffs out her cigarette. “See you at home.”

“Okay.” Silver takes her glass and smiles briefly. “See you at home.” He goes to the other end of the bar to tend to another customer. 

Max is getting up to make her way out when Vane turns and looks directly at her.

“Not gonna say hi?” he asks.

Well, fuck. Max offers him a smile. “Can you blame me?” She’s aware of Silver watching them carefully from the other end of the bar.

“Guess not.” Vane scrutinizes her for a moment, black eyes unfathomable. “I’m not mad at you. Anymore.”

“Thank God for that,” Max says sarcastically. With that, she walks past him, head high, and right out into the cold.

At least, she thinks, he didn’t make a scene. A lot changes in three years. She thinks with some amusement that she should know that better than anyone.

The house is dark and seems a little ghostly when she gets home. The pale wood is stark against the black of night and the dark windows, and from the road, the branches of the great tree, brittle and leafless in the cold, seem to spread like so many creeping fingers over the face of the house. The tinkling windchimes are the only hint of welcome. Max wonders when it started feeling so odd to come home to an empty house.

Before she goes to sleep, she turns the porch light on. It burns warm and golden, cutting through the night. She feels a little silly doing it, with the number of times she’s bitched Silver out for running up the energy bill, but she likes it. She likes the idea of this good house being lit up on the outside, as well as the inside, warmth leaking past the branches of that big old tree.

Silver notices this change. She knows he does. But he doesn’t say anything. He starts turning the light on at sunset, so that when she gets home sometimes past 6 P.M., everything seems welcoming, the light, the song of the windchimes, Silver’s private, affectionate smile that he thinks she doesn’t notice.

On Saturday night, Max is getting dressed to go meet Madi at the library. She hears Silver open the door, crunching something loudly.

Max turns to look at him. He’s eating hot Cheetos. “Don’t you knock?” she asks.

“You know when I’m coming,” Silver says, stomping his left foot. It makes a characteristic thud against the wood.

Max rolls her eyes, turning back to the mirror. She doesn’t dignify that with a response, mostly because he’s right. She’s struggling to zip herself into her dress.

“Where you going?” he asks, not really curious.

“Poetry reading,” she replies, and Silver rolls his eyes.

“Seriously?” he asks. “What am I supposed to do all alone here? Wait for my fucking phone to ring?”

“Zip me up,” Max says. “And don’t get your fucking crumbs on my dress.”

Silver wipes his fingers on his pants and holds the half empty bag of chips between his teeth. He comes forward and zips up her dress.

“Thank you,” Max says primly. “And don’t worry. It’s Saturday night. Someone will order something.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Silver says, putting an entire handful of Cheetos in his mouth. “Can’t believe you’re forcing me to get high with a stranger instead of my roommate.”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything. And if that’s the last bag of hot Cheetos, I’m evicting you.” Max opens her closet to survey her shoes.

“Black ones,” Silver says. Then he frowns. “Why are you even going to a poetry reading?”

“I’m going with a friend from work,” Max answers, stepping into the black shoes. “That is the last bag, isn’t it?”

Silver, suddenly, becomes engrossed with the nutrition facts on the bag. Max snatches it from him and pours the last few crumbs into her mouth. She slaps the empty bag to Silver’s chest as she walks past him. 

“Dick!” he yells down the stairs as she pulls her coat on.

“Good night!” she yells back.

The library is decorated for Christmas and more lively than Max has ever seen it. The parking lot is almost full, and when she steps inside, the space is thick with body heat and laughter. Madi appears almost out of nowhere to greet her, her dark eyes warm and bright.

“I’m so glad you came,” Madi says happily. “Come, there’s food in the back.”

Max follows Madi, almost overwhelmed. She’s certainly overdressed, but that’s not what makes her feel out of place. Everyone here seems to already know and love one another. Everywhere she looks, people are eating, laughing, pressing close together, taking pictures on a single disposable camera that’s being passed around. Max doesn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Well, she supposes she does know what she was expecting: a room full of Eleanors, Eleanor as she is today, well-dressed and self-congratulatory at the idea of supporting the arts.

“Max,” Mrs. Scott says warmly. “It’s good to see you.” She puts a hand on the shoulder of a tall man with rich, dark skin and deep smile lines. He has Madi’s eyes, intense and kind all at once. “This is my husband.”

Mr. Scott shakes Max’s hand. “So this is the Max I’ve heard so much about.” He speaks with an unfamiliar accent. West African, maybe, Max thinks. “Good to finally meet you.”

“And you,” Max manages. She doesn’t think she’s ever had a warmer welcome in her life. “This is a great event you put together.”

Mrs. Scott smiles. “All we did was put out the food,” she says. “It’s the people who show up that make it what it is.”

“And you haven’t heard the poet yet,” Mr. Scott adds. “Very talented young woman.”

They chat for another few minutes before Madi tugs Max’s arm, pulls her around the room to introduce her to her friends. Finally, they loop back to the table of food, where Idelle and August are talking to Madi’s parents. Max is relieved to see people she actually knows. She listens to the conversation for a while, eating from her paper plate. They aren’t really talking about much, just joking and laughing and reveling in what this night is, a gathering of loved ones outside of the December cold.

It takes almost an hour for everyone to get settled and quiet in their chairs. There’s no stage, and so the poet looks small and young in the spotlight. Max glances to her left at Madi, who is staring, enraptured, at the poet. When the poet speaks, all the uncertainty and smallness seems to fall away, like she has become bigger just by speaking truly.

Max doesn’t listen closely. Instead, she closes her eyes, allows herself to be swept up by the words, the soft sounds of an attentive audience. It almost shocks her when the reading ends, and everyone rises from their chairs. Madi surges forward to congratulate the poet. Max watches all of this happen around her, as if in a dream.

As the night wears on, the buzz of conversation fades. Idelle hugs Max goodbye, tightly, before she pulls away. The warmth of her embrace stays with Max. Two or three at a time, people file out the door. Idelle and August leave. The poet and her boyfriend leave. Madi’s parents leave. Soon, it’s just Max and Madi left, sitting on the floor because all the folding chairs have been put away, sharing the last few sips of boxed wine from the now-empty food table.

“I never liked poetry before,” Max says. There’s a sour-sweet taste in her mouth from the wine.

“Did you like this?” Madi asks. The only lights left on are the ones by the door. The Ozarks are cold, and blue, and in the winter it is bare and selfish. In the summer, it is balmy, open, warm. It is both at once now. It is the cold at the door, and, in the low, gold light, it is the black warmth of Madi’s eyes, the glow of her copper-dark skin.

“I don’t think that’s the word for it,” Max says. “I felt it.”

“Felt it,” Madi says, like she’s testing the words. “Did it feel good?”

Max smiles. “Yes,” she says. “It felt good.”

“You remind me of someone,” Madi says, almost absently, if Madi does anything absently. 

“Who?”

“John.” A wistful look crosses her face. Max doesn’t say anything. She watches Madi, and she waits.

“He had a way with words,” Madi says. “Knew how to use them. Knew what people wanted to hear, how to get what he wanted from them. Knew what I wanted to hear, too, but he didn’t use it. He never lied to me.” 

“What happened to him?” Max asks.

Madi finishes the wine in the box, as though it will ease the words from her throat for her. “He asked to marry me,” she says, raw. “He loved me so much, Max. God. I didn’t know someone could love one person so much. My whole life, I was raised to love my neighbor. My family. My town. I always knew I was coming back here to my community, because I have work left to do. But he came in my life, and he said let’s belong to each other. Let’s travel the world. Let’s forget everything except each other. Let me be your husband. Be my wife. Christ, I-” Madi looks up, trying to keep her composure, and Max sees tears glimmering in her eyes. “I couldn’t do what he was asking me for. I couldn’t forget my life’s work for him. If I asked him for the same thing, he would’ve done it in a second. So he didn’t even think that I wouldn’t be able to.”

Max takes her hand, and Madi holds on tightly.

“I think you are strong,” Max says softly. “For leaving a man who would have taken you away from everything you do here. I think you are brave for choosing the work you do over love.”

Madi lets out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t want to be strong or brave sometimes,” she admits quietly. “I love my town. But I loved him, too.”

Max squeezes Madi’s hand, and Madi squeezes back. “Would you have given up this night?” Max asks. “What you did here? Let that girl speak to her people? Would you give up every night like this?”

“No,” Madi murmurs. Quiet, but sure.

“Love can be destructive,” Max says, and this feels like a confession, although she doesn’t mean it that way. “Believe me.”

Madi looks surprised at that, and a little sad. Max thinks she's going to disagree, but she doesn’t say anything. They sit together there for a long time, without a single word passing between them.

* * *

If I do not love the world--if I do not love life--if I do not love people, I cannot enter into dialogue.

-Paulo Friere,  _ Pedagogy of the Oppressed _


	6. vi. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 1999

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: derogatory language/attitudes towards addicts and native americans, nongraphic mentions of drug use

In spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power--almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.

-Eric Fromm, _The Art of Loving_

* * *

The first clue that summer is coming is better business, at both her day and night jobs. As it gets hotter, tourists start trickling in, and they want cabins for weekend getaways or family vacations or boys’ trips. It’s this last group that comes to the club, and although none of them tip well, a crowded floor always means better luck for dancers.

The beginning of summer means something else, too. Tax season is over, so August has had time to devote time to Max and her ideas. They meet at least once a week to draw up plans, and he tells her that they should be up and running within three months. 

“Lucky that you’re guaranteed an investment from me and Eleanor,” August says. “Or else who knows how long it would take.”

The summer bears down on them so quickly Max can hardly believe it. It’s hot and sweating, thrilling, one victory after another. Idelle gets her real estate agent’s license, and as they celebrate at Danny’s, August gets on one knee. Idelle cries. August cries. Max buys drinks all around. 

This new town has never seemed so friendly, with everything she has always wanted in reach. 

It’s a muggy Saturday night at the club. The doors are all thrown open, but this doesn’t help. The still, soupy air is almost unbearable to work in, and most of the girls are opting to ply the clients with drink instead of performing in the awful heat. 

Still, it seems that the summer has been good to others, too. There’s a group of men that tumble inside around 11 P.M., and they’re clearly celebrating something. They’re all already drunk, clapping one of their companions on the back and pushing him towards the stage. Max recognizes one or two of them as her regulars. She makes meaningful eye contact with Idelle, and they converge on the men.

The night is going well so far, her regulars, as always, entranced and paying well. But only a few minutes in, she feels a hand on her wrist, too hard. 

“No touching,” Max says reflexively, pulling her hand from the man’s grip. But then she looks back at him, and it isn’t lust or greed on his face. It’s fury. 

Max knows danger when she sees it. She’s already disentangling herself from the client, her eyes fixed on the man. It’s the one they’d all been celebrating. She doesn’t know him, and she can’t fathom what it is about the sight of her that invokes such pure and chilling hatred in him. It doesn’t matter to her, not right now. Right now, she needs to remove herself from this group, and get a bouncer’s attention.

Max tries to make a beeline despite the men’s protests, but the one she’s trying to escape comes swiftly after her.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?” he snarls. He’s over a foot taller than she is, and probably twice as broad. Max lowers her eyes, trying not to antagonize him. 

“I’m sorry, mister, but please tell me if I’ve done something wrong,” she says.

“What’s wrong with you, man?” one of his friends says, nonplussed. “You just got out, don’t start shit-”

“You ruined my fucking life,” the man spits at Max, ignoring his friend. “You know that? You ruined my fucking life. And now you show up here? In my fucking town?”

Max shakes her head. “I think you are confused,” she says. Her tone is gentle, and does not betray her fear. “I don’t know you.”

He laughs wildly. “You don’t know me?” he demands. “You don’t know me?” His eyes are fogged. He’s not sober, and that makes it easy to see the violence in every line of his body. Max is backing away, but he never gets a chance to raise his hand at her. Idelle, at this precise moment, appears with one of the bouncers.

“I think you should leave,” the bouncer says.

“Let’s just fucking go, man,” the friend hisses.

The man stares at her a moment longer. She can almost feel the rage radiating off him like dry heat. Not like this Missouri summer. 

“Ask your fucking girlfriend,” the man challenges, even as he lets his friends lead him away. “Ask her about me.”

Idelle grabs her hand, her eyes big and worried. “Are you okay?” she asks. “Jesus, that was scary.”

“I’m fine,” Max says, shaking Idelle off. “Who was that?”

“Charles Vane,” Idelle says, frowning. “He, uh. He was dating Eleanor, right up until he went to jail. That was like three years ago. I guess he got out.”

“Obviously,” Max snaps. She sighs and tries to collect herself. “How do you know?”

“Everyone knows,” Idelle says. “Everybody was talking about it when the mayor’s daughter started fucking around with an Indian junkie.” She hesitates. “And, well. I knew him, when we were little. We weren’t friends, or anything, but I knew him.”

Max finishes her shift with her mind elsewhere. The wind seems to have taken a sour turn when she drives home.

It takes her two days to ask Eleanor about Charles Vane. She’s trying to make sense of the bits of story she has on her own, but they won’t fit together. How could he hate her so much without her ever knowing he existed?

When Max says the name out loud, over dinner, Eleanor seems to freeze where she sits. “He got out?” she asks.

“Yes,” Max says. “Does that surprise you?”

“I guess not,” Eleanor says quietly. “It’s just been a long time since I heard his name.”

“Why would he be so angry with me?” Max asks. 

Eleanor shrugs. “Jealousy?” she offers. “He was there the first time I saw you.”

“I didn’t know you left someone for me,” Max says slowly.

“It’s a compliment,” Eleanor says, smiling. Max doesn’t smile back, and Eleanor’s expression becomes faintly annoyed. “It doesn’t matter, okay? I’m with you now. If he’s scaring you, I can help you get a restraining order. Woodes could do that in a couple days.”

“Your cop friend,” Max says with slight distaste. 

“Yes, my cop friend,” Eleanor says wearily.

“What was he in jail for?” Max asks. “Charles Vane?”

“Assault,” Eleanor says, going back to her food. “Look, he’s always been violent. I thought I was being rebellious by fucking him, but I was just being stupid. It doesn’t surprise me that he came after you.”

“Does anybody in town know about me?” Max asks. She thinks of how Idelle had phrased it. “Does anyone know the mayor’s daughter is fucking around with a black stripper?”

“Jesus, Max.” Eleanor stares at her, looking a little repulsed. “Where the hell is this coming from?”

“I’m just curious,” Max says flatly. 

“No one knows about our relationship yet,” Eleanor says carefully. “But you know that, Max, I told you this is a conservative place. You can’t really come out here. But it won’t matter what people know once we have our companies set up.”

Max doesn’t answer. She wonders if she has the balls to ask Eleanor the question that’s really weighing on her.

“Look.” Eleanor leans over and takes Max’s hand. “I love you. That’s all that matters.”

She doesn’t ask. She lets Eleanor move the conversation on, and pretends she’s forgotten all about it.

For a moment, it seems like that’s going to be the end of it. It really does. August and Idelle have a little ceremony by the lake, summer-sweet, unable to stand not being married for another second. Eleanor, in her own way, is affectionate. She makes lemonade again, this time too sweet, but Max doesn’t have the heart to tell her so. She drinks it anyway, and then Eleanor kisses her, lips sticky with too much sugar. When Max looks back on it, she thinks she should have known this was the first sign, the saccharine kisses with nothing behind the teeth.

It’s such an unbearably beautiful day, the day that it all ends. It’s almost 6 P.M., but the sun hasn’t set yet. The sky is stained cool pink and blue, and Max is so sure that it’s going to be a lovely evening. She sits on the porch to wait for Eleanor to get home, listening to the radio and smoking a lazy cigarette, letting herself fantasize about what her life may be like a year from now, what the first summer of the millennium will be. She wonders if it will be as beautiful as this one.

But Eleanor doesn’t come home. Max goes inside when it gets dark just past 8 P.M. She makes dinner, and then she eats it by herself. 9 P.M. comes and goes, and then 10.

Max is starting to worry when she hears the front door slam. She hurries out of the bedroom to see Eleanor standing there in her work clothes, looking dead-eye exhausted.

“Are you okay?” Max asks. “Where have you been?”

“Talking to my father,” Eleanor says. She slumps into a chair, dropping her bag to the floor. She hasn’t taken off her shoes.

Max kneels before Eleanor and takes her hands, hoisting her soothing, loving-partner look onto her face. “What happened now?” she asks softly.

“He said he would make me executive manager of my department,” Eleanor says quietly. She isn’t meeting Max’s eyes. “With a path to CEO.”

“That’s good, cheri.” Eleanor doesn’t look at her. “Why aren’t you happy?” Max asks.

“Because his condition is that I stop seeing you,” Eleanor whispers. “If I don’t, he’ll fire me. Remove me from the will.”

Max puts her hands on Eleanor’s face, forcing her to meet her eyes. “We will be all right,” she assures her. “We always have been. We have savings. We can find you a new job. You never meant to work at that company forever, right?” But Eleanor is shaking her head.

“He’ll blacklist me from everywhere that matters,” she says. “The only place I’ll find a fucking job is McDonald’s.”

“So you will work at McDonald’s for a while,” Max says calmly. “Cheri, this is not the time for pride.” Then something else occurs to her, and she frowns. “How did he know?”

“Charles told him, apparently,” Eleanor says, and she doesn’t even seem to have the energy to be enraged at this. “After he saw you, he went and told my father about you.” She smiles mirthlessly. “I think they both want to keep this quiet.”

“After he-” Max blinks. “Eleanor, that was weeks ago. You and your father were talking about this for weeks?”

Eleanor closes her eyes briefly, her hands curling around Max’s wrists. Her fingers are cold. “It’s not about pride,” she says hollowly. “He’s trying to take away something that belongs to me.”

Max thinks, for a moment, that she’s the _something_ that belongs to Eleanor, and that makes her feel sick and small. But then she looks, really looks, at Eleanor’s expression, and realizes that Eleanor was talking about the company. Max rips her hands away and scrambles back, sitting ungracefully against the coffee table.

“You are kicking me out,” Max says numbly.

Eleanor reaches for her, her ice-chip eyes wide and beseeching.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Max spits. “Don’t-”

“Max, please. This isn’t forever, okay? I promise this is only temporary, just until-”

“Fucking weeks.” Max can’t think, can barely speak. “All this time, you were going to kick me out.”

“It’s not like that.” Eleanor is almost shouting. “God, Max, it’s complicated, okay? This is- the company is mine. I need it. I love you, I swear I do, but I have work left to do and that doesn’t have anything to do with love. It can’t.”

Max laughs so that she doesn’t cry. “Coward,” she says. “Why don’t you fucking grow up and tell me to my goddamned face? Tell me you are choosing money over me. Tell me you were planning with your father for weeks to make me homeless in this town I moved to for you. Tell me.”

Eleanor stares back at her, pink mouth open, blue eyes horrified. For a moment, the only sound is the radio in the other room still playing old folk music.

Max lurches to her feet, unable to stand looking at Eleanor for another second. Eleanor trails after her into the bedroom.

“Max, wait. What are you doing?”

Max doesn’t answer. She drags her one suitcase out from under the bed and starts throwing things into it, her work bags, her toothbrush, the clothes she’ll need for work for the next few days. She barely has the presence of mind to grab the box full of her papers- birth certificate, green card, licenses, bank statements- and thrust it into her suitcase before she zips it up.

“You don’t have to leave tonight,” Eleanor says, dismayed.

She does need to leave tonight. If she stays, she will cry, or she will scream, or she will beg, or maybe she will do all three and she won’t ever be able to face herself again. So Max throws her suitcase in her car tight-lipped, and without another word, backs out of the driveway and leaves Eleanor standing helplessly on the side of the road.

Good, Max thinks viciously. Let her stare after her headlights. Let this sweet summer night be poisoned, chilled. Let that tiny fucking house on the river freeze over.

When Eleanor is far behind her, Max can’t hold it in anymore. She pulls over to the side of the road and lets it all pour out of her. She presses her forehead to the steering wheel and wails, as long and loud as she pleases, not a single soul for miles to witness her grief.

When she has screamed herself raw, Max opens the sun visor mirror and wipes streaked makeup from her face. She forces herself to get it together. She will not give any fucking Guthrie the satisfaction of proving her to be less than she is. No, she will not buckle and weep. She will learn the rules of this game, and she will win. Max thinks she has just had her first lesson. She smiles at herself in the mirror and it looks like a grimace, bared teeth and faded lipstick. Max snaps the mirror shut.

She knocks at the Featherstone door. Idelle and August are visibly concerned when all the information Max offers them is “Me and Eleanor broke up.” Max doesn’t care. She brushes her teeth and collapses onto the couch, and pretends she can’t hear Idelle and August whispering in the other room.

The bright summer seems mocking, now. Idelle goes to Eleanor’s house and brings back Max’s things for her, and the house fills with boxes of remnants of a shared life cleaved in two. August and Idelle insist that they go out on the boat. Max lets them take her, but she has no interest in any of it, beers and watermelon, lilting guitar over the water. She doesn’t care for the blue spray of the river kicked up by the boat, even though it cools her heated skin in such a wonderful way. 

Max focuses on her work. She quits the club so she can focus on real estate, and it pays off. She’s the most successful agent at the realty, and her commissions are piling up. She starts working on getting a broker’s license, in the spare moments between her 60-hour work weeks. August starts drafting a business loan application.

“Losing Eleanor set us back,” August says, worry lining his face.

“It will not kill us,” Max replies. “And we are better off without an unreliable investor.”

At that, Idelle looks like she wants to say something, something awful like _are you okay._ Max quells her with a look, and Idelle closes her mouth.

Max spends all her free time searching for somewhere else to live. August and Idelle keep insisting she can stay with them as long as she likes. She smiles and thanks them, but she doesn’t let up on her search. She’s had more than enough lessons on the limits of a loved one’s kindness.

On Sundays, Max rests. In a town like this, everything comes to a halt on Sundays. Max cares very little for God, and even if she did, there is no Catholic church here. Still, these sluggish Sundays force her to take a breath, to make sure she has enough food and clean clothing for the next week, to sleep good and long without fearing that she’ll miss a meeting. It feels almost despicably indulgent, but there is no other work to be done, on Sundays. She sits on August and Idelle’s porch by herself, watching a red-gold sun set, blowing smoke to a burning hot sky.

Today, though, is not such a Sunday. She has an appointment to see a house. It’s for sale, not for rent, which Max likes, and very cheap, which Max likes even more, but it’s not a kind of house she wants to get old in. It’s ancient and rickety, and the forest encroaches from all directions, leaves almost touching the sides of the house, the front yard taken up by a massive tree. The tree is as tall as the house itself, but some branches hang so low that Max could grab it with both hands. The porch needs to be repainted. Inside, there is a fireplace that clearly hasn’t been used in years. The floors are wooden and uncarpeted, and walking up the stairs makes them groan, as if in discomfort. The location, too, is poor. It’s almost a forty-five minute drive out of town, truly in the middle of nowhere. For the life of her, Max doesn’t understand the pride glowing in the man’s voice as he shows her the house.

After the tour, they emerge onto the porch. The owner of the house sits back on a chair and gestures for her to sit, too. She does after a moment of hesitation.

“Why are you selling?” Max asks.

“Moving to the big city,” he says. “Hate to leave the house, but I need money to get me started. You know, my great-great-grandparents built this place with their hands.”

“Your family has lived here ever since?” Max thinks about that, about staking out a home for a whole lineage.

“Four generations,” the man says, nodding. “This house was good to us.” He looks at her closely for a moment. “Need to find somebody who’ll be good back.”

It’s a little cloudy today, but the day is still searing hot. Under the half-hidden sun, Max can suddenly see it, a hundred years of love come to the man in his rocking chair, his brown skin flushed with anticipation at leaving the Ozarks and his four-generation house behind.

A warm breeze blows through, making the little windchimes hanging on the rafters clink faintly. Max takes the house.

She’s not ready to go back to August and Idelle’s home yet. She drives aimlessly around, and eventually comes across a bar, closer to the river, smaller and shittier than Danny’s. Max pulls into the parking lot, thinking vaguely of a couple beers to brace her against the force of the newlyweds’ affection for one another.

It’s not crowded. Normal, given that it’s 4 P.M. on a Sunday. It should make it easy to notice Charles Vane, sitting with his forehead against the bar, but Max is too busy trying to decide on a good balance between enough drinks to make August and Idelle tolerable to be around and enough sobriety that she can drive home without killing herself. She sits at the very end of the bar, orders, and looks up to see Vane, staring directly at her.

He rises stiltedly to his feet and lumbers towards her. He doesn’t seem to know what to do, after that, just standing there and staring blankly at her. There’s none of the same rage he’d had, the first night at the club, and so Max doesn’t get up to run away. She just watches him and waits.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. 

“Drinking,” Max replies. “What are you doing here?”

“Drinking,” Vane says. He sits down, two chairs away from her. Far enough that they don’t have to talk, and close enough that they could. His shirt has no sleeves. Max can see track marks, stark and fresh.

She knows it’s stupid to provoke him. She knows he’s bigger and stronger than her. She knows he has a history of violence. But it seems, now, that she’s angrier than him, and that’s enough to make her lash out.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Max asks, nonchalant.

“What?”

She turns to face him. “Did you get. What you wanted?” Max repeats, her voice cold now.

“She left you,” Vane realizes. He turns back to his drink. 

“You didn’t get anything,” Max says. She laughs. It would be a gentle sound, if it was accompanied by gentle words. 

He stiffens, but doesn’t look at her.

“She said that fucking you was stupid rebellion,” Max continues. “Pissing off her dad.” She leans on her elbow, watching him. “But it was more than that for you, right?”

Vane seems to be curving into himself, his broad back bending over the bar, as if it will protect him.

“Yeah.” Max laughs again, delighted. “My God. At least she loved me.”

This is what breaks him. He slams his hands down on the bar so heavily that Max feels the tremor go through her, and he turns blazing eyes on her. He’s breathing hard, and even from a few feet away, Max can feel the reignited anger. Maybe he doesn’t want to be arrested again. Maybe he doesn’t want to hit a woman. Maybe he’s just frozen to the spot, unable to get up under the weight of the humiliation and the wretchedness that is loving a woman like Eleanor. Whatever it is, he doesn’t attack her. He sits there, burning and angry, and says, very quietly, “Fuck you.”

Max smiles nastily back at him. He glares at her, and when he speaks again, his body language promises violence. “Get out.”

Max puts payment for her untouched drink on the bar and leaves without saying another word.

When she gets back to the house, Idelle is in the kitchen, cooking dinner. This is another feature of Sunday, elaborate evening meals that must be preceded with a grace. Idelle looks up from her preparations with a big smile.

“You saw that house today, right?” she asks. “Did you get what you wanted?”

Max, after a single moment of hesitation, shrugs. “I’m moving out on the first of next month,” she says instead of answering the question. “Thank you for everything.”

* * *

I’d like to buy you a pair of pillow-soled hiking boots  
To help you with your climb   
Or rather to help the bodies you step over along your route   
So they won’t hurt like mine

-Fiona Apple, _Under the Table_


	7. vii. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2003

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for derogatory language abt addicts and osage natives

There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _

* * *

The new year blows in bright and freezing. Silver laughs at her as Max stumps around the house, wrapped in blankets even though the heat is blasting. “It’s not even that cold out,” he says. “God, Max, it’s like 40 degrees.”

Max scowls. “I will never get used to this,” she says irritably. “I hate this state. It will be snowing tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Silver says, laughing. “Never seen anyone act like they’re dying over 40 goddamn degrees.” Max kicks him.

It does snow the next day. Max puffs on her cigarette triumphantly. Silver ignores her.

So life meanders on. Concrete development plans are taking shape. She spends evenings at home with Silver and weekends out with Idelle and Madi. It all feels stable. Exactly how she has always wanted it. What a joy it is, to have such an unremarkable life, with close friends and a good house and a dependable income.

It is an early Wednesday evening in February, dark and cold, but the windchimes are jangling brightly outside, and Max is warm, for once. They’re watching TV without paying attention to it, throwing chips at each other and passing a joint back and forth. Silver has taken off his prosthetic leg so as to more easily sit on the small couch with her. It’s the first time Silver has done this in front of her, in all the months they’ve known each other, despite how much it must ache to keep it on for so much of the day. Max doesn’t comment on this, or even let her eyes linger too long on the leg where it lies on the floor. She knows he doesn’t want her to. So she doesn’t, just shifts where she sits to accommodate him and lets him keep talking.

“It was funny, actually,” Silver is saying. “I mean, he knows I work there. Idiot invited me to a gig at my own fucking bar. Jack Rackham. What an asshole. Weird, though, can you imagine Vane playing music?”

“Vane?” Max asks, a little distractedly as she takes a hit.

“Yeah, they’re in a band,” Silver says, chortling. “Fucking, like, bluegrass, or something. Jack didn’t shut up about it.”

“Bluegrass,” Max repeats. She  _ can’t _ imagine Vane playing music. “They’re playing at the bar?”

“Next Friday,” Silver says, stuffing chips into his mouth. “Why, you wanna go?”

“No,” Max says. She’s curious, though. “Are they good?”

Silver laughs, giving her a view of his chewed-up chips. Max makes a face at him, which just makes him laugh harder.

“They’re okay,” Silver says. “You know how I know that? Jack literally called his girlfriend to come and practice their set just to prove they were good. Vane, poor bastard. Just wanted to smoke his blunt. I finished it while they were playing, he almost knocked my head off.”

“How the fuck do you make any money?” Max marvels.

“Don’t know how many times I have to tell you this,” Silver says. “I’m-”

“Charming. Right.” Max snatches the pillow from behind his head and tucks it under her own, settling back. “Hard to think of Vane making music.”

“He actually is good,” Silver says, grabbing the pillow back. “Like, really good. He practices a lot.”

Max snorts. “You mean he finally found something to do other than drugs and beating the shit out of people?” she asks.

Silver doesn’t laugh, just looks thoughtful as he takes the joint from her. “He has a bad reputation,” he says. “He’s all right, really.”

“All right?” Max laughs derisively. “He almost attacked me at my job. He outed Eleanor to her father. You know what they do to lesbians around here? You know what they could’ve done to  _ me?” _

“He didn’t tell everyone,” Silver points out. “You both ended up okay. And, I mean.” He pauses. “After what Eleanor did to him, I didn’t really blame him.”

Max looks at him, baffled. Silver has never spoken so earnestly about a customer. “What she did to him?” she says slowly.

Silver shrugs and takes a slow drag. “It was when they were still fucking,” he says. “There was this guy who was bugging Eleanor. Attacked her at a party one time. Eleanor didn’t want to tell her parents or the cops, I think because he was selling her coke or some shit. So Charles beat the shit out of him. Got arrested. No one bailed him out, no one got him a lawyer, and he did three years for assault. And when he was done, it was like Eleanor never even saw him before.”

Max can’t quite think of anything to say. Finally, she settles on, “How do you know all that?”

“Half a blunt, that guy will tell you fucking anything.” Silver takes a hit and then passes her the joint. “He told me all that even before you told me about Eleanor. I feel kind of bad for him,” he adds. “Eleanor really fucked up his life. Like, the first time he ever did H was with her. And now she’s coming up on CEO and he spends all his time playing bass and trying not to relapse. He still thinks about her all the damn time.”

Max doesn’t answer. She turns to the TV and watches without really watching. Silver doesn’t seem too bothered, just stretches out and lights another joint as Max finishes the one they’d been sharing. In her four years of living in this town, she’s never heard anyone say anything about Charles Vane except that he is a good-for-nothing junkie and a violent felon, and how fortunate it is that Eleanor Guthrie got away from him. In quieter tones, sometimes, people add that it just goes to show that the Osage really don’t belong here anymore.

“I hope you don’t tell everybody my business like this,” Max says suddenly. 

“‘Course not,” Silver says, not taking his eyes off the TV. “Wouldn’t do that.”

Max makes a little skeptical noise, and Silver turns to look at her. His eyes are getting red, but he looks sincere when he speaks again. “I never told anyone anything about you,” he says. “Nobody even knows where I live, except the other guy at the bar.”

Satisfied, Max puts her feet in his lap. Silver rearranges the blanket to get comfortable and keeps eating his chips.

Going to work feels a little different, now that Max knows the full extent of the price of Eleanor’s successful job and husband. She will be sitting in a meeting, a polite expression plastered on her face as Woodes Rogers talks over her and Eleanor pretends not to notice, as they decide on how best to drive people from their riverside homes, and she will suddenly think of Vane, at home with Jack Rackham and his girlfriend, playing bass and smoking and thinking of Eleanor. 

Madi, ever-observant, notices Max’s distraction. She’s tactful but straightforward when she brings it up, in her typical manner, and Max tries to think of how to answer her.

“Do you know Charles Vane?” she says finally.

Madi grimaces. “I met him once,” she says. “In high school. He took me and Eleanor to a party.”

“What did you think of him?” Max asks.

“I remember thinking he liked Eleanor more than she liked him,” Madi says, sighing. “I remember she acted really different around him. I didn’t hang out with them after that, and then he got arrested. Eleanor told me her dad wouldn’t let her help him. But, by then, she was already spending most of her time in New Orleans, and she was talking about that a lot more than Charles.”

Max nods slowly, and doesn’t speak for a moment. Madi studies her. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Max says, shrugging. “He’s in a band now. Bluegrass, or something. They’re performing on Friday. Do you want to come see them with me?”

Madi lights up. They’ve talked a lot about music, blues and folk and jazz, and Max knew she’d be interested in a local musician. “I’d love to,” she says.

It makes her feel a little better to know that Madi will come with her. She knows that if she goes with only Silver, the weight of her shared history with Vane will be too much. With Madi, she can pretend she’s just there to appreciate the local music tradition.

Friday, as Idelle informs Max when she gets to work, is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day has never meant a thing to Max, which she tells Idelle right before she tells her to get back to work.

Still, there’s something in the air. It’s hard to pinpoint. Maybe it’s how clear the sky is today, how crisp the breeze is. Maybe it’s just relief that she doesn’t have to deal with Eleanor today.

Whatever it is, Max goes home feeling light. She’s actually looking forward to the concert. She isn’t sure Silver and Madi will get along, but it won’t matter much anyway, with Silver behind the bar. 

They’re eating an early dinner of takeout before Silver’s shift. Of his travels that day, he’s brought home a few stories and a ring. It’s costume jewelry, couldn’t have been more than $20 at the pawn shop, but his face is almost deadly serious when he flops onto the couch, holds it out to her, and says, “Please never marry me.”

“Done,” Max says mildly, taking the ring. “Where did you get this from?”

“God, you’ll never believe this.” Silver pops an entire spring roll into his mouth. “This guy bought a stainless steel ring with a plastic fucking diamond to propose to his girlfriend today. He knew her for two months.”

“What happened?”

Silver snorts. “She said no, so he decided to get high and give away the ring.”

Max puts it on and pretends to admire it. “How romantic,” she says. 

“Happy V-day,” Silver says. Just as he says this, the phone rings. Before Max can move, Silver is bounding over to the kitchen doorway, where the phone is. She rolls her eyes. He’s taken to answering her phone just to bother her. It does bother her, mostly because he has a cell phone, so she can’t retaliate.

“Hello,” Silver singsongs into the phone. “You are speaking to Max Dauphin’s not-husband, how may I help you?” He grins at Max from across the room, and she gives him the finger. His face falls, and for an insane moment, Max thinks she’s hurt his feelings. Then, completely bewildered, he says,  _ “Madi?” _

Max stares at him. What on earth could make him so horrified to hear her friend’s voice?

Even as she thinks it, she sees a familiar pain in Silver’s face, and she realizes exactly who Silver came to this town for. 

“Is your name John?” It’s all Max can think of to say.

Silver doesn’t answer, just throws an incredulous look at her. “No, I- I’m her roommate,” he says into the phone.

Max hears Madi answering indistinctly, and then Silver holds out the phone. “She wants to talk to you,” he says stiffly.

Max takes the phone, and Silver brushes past her. He stomps up the stairs, not staying to hear the conversation.

“Max?” Madi’s voice is steady, but it’s a little higher than usual. “John is your roommate?”

“I did not know he was your ex-boyfriend,” Max assures her. Jesus, what a stupid soap opera moment. She thinks back on the last couple of months, thinking disbelievingly that she must have mentioned their names to each other at least once. But then, she supposes they wouldn’t be here now if she did.

“Did you- are you-” Madi swallows audibly. “Together?”

“No,” Max says firmly.

“Christ.” Madi laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I thought he left town months ago. What the hell is he still doing here?”

“Do you want him gone?” Max asks. “Because, Madi, you are my friend, but he is…” She’s trying to think of how to finish that sentence. What is Silver? A best friend? Family? A brother? She can’t bring herself to say that out loud. “Don’t make me choose.”

“I won’t,” Madi says quickly. “I won’t.”

For a moment, the only sound is Madi’s staticky breathing. Max leans against the doorframe, waiting for Madi to speak.

“I’ll still come tonight,” Madi says. “If you want me to.”  _ If he wants me to.  _ Madi doesn’t say it, but the uncertainty in her voice speaks for her. Max rubs her forehead. 

“What did you call me about?” Max asks.

“I just wanted to know what time I should be there,” Madi says after a moment.

“Nine,” Max replies.

“Okay.”

Madi hangs up first. Max sets the phone down slowly, and takes a deep breath. 

Upstairs, Silver is sitting in his room, door open, lights off. He looks up as Max approaches. He isn’t crying, like Max half expected, but he looks more miserable than she’s seen him in a while.

“Hey, Max,” he says.

“Hey, Silver.” Max sits down on the bed next to him. She waits for him to speak. She knows he will.

It takes a long minute, but he does.

“So that’s your friend from work,” Silver says finally.

“Yes,” Max answers.

“Did you know?”

“No,” Max says gently. “I wouldn’t keep a secret like that from you.”

Silver buries his face in his hands and then falls back onto the bed, so he’s staring up at the ceiling. Max lies beside him. They’re quiet for a while, breathing together. The wind rustles the trees gently against the window. If they were downstairs, in the living room, they might be able to hear the windchimes out front.

“Why am I not over her?” Silver asks the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” Max says honestly.

She feels him shift, but he doesn’t get up. She turns her head to look at him, and finds him already looking back at her, the gray light of dusk making his eyes seem unusually bright. “Did you stay for her?” Max asks.

“I don’t know.” Silver sighs and looks back up at the ceiling. “I’m still gonna have to go to work,” he says ruefully. “So I guess I should get it together.”

“Yes, you should, John.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Max sits up and pats his leg. “I can’t believe I never knew your first name,” she says.

“Don’t get excited,” Silver says, pulling himself to his feet. “It’s not even my real name.”

“What is?” Max asks.

He looks back at her. She thinks, for a moment, that he isn’t even going to bother to lie. Then, so quietly she barely hears him, he answers, “Suleiman.” Again, he offers no other information, whether this is a first or last or fake name, and again, she does not ask.

Max puts on a dress. Silver has to zip her into it again. They drive to the bar in relative quiet. It’s a good quiet, though. Max is sorry to let go of it when they pull into the parking lot of the already noisy bar.

It’s lively inside, and Silver hoists his salesman’s smile on almost automatically. Max touches his elbow briefly, and he nods at her before he slips behind the bar and starts yelling out greetings. A chorus of shouts greet him back, people setting down beer bottles and cigarettes and pool sticks to shout hello. Someone punches Johnny Cash into the jukebox, and Silver laughs and thanks them by name. He has an easy, swinging charm that fits perfectly into Danny’s, as if he’s tailored it. Max thinks that he probably has. She wonders how a woman like Madi, with her unshakeable integrity, fell in love with a man like Silver.

Max sits at the bar so Silver can serve her a drink. He doesn’t have to ask what she wants, just sets it in front of her: vodka, neat.

Madi isn’t here yet. The performance isn’t due to start for at least another half hour, but there’s a familiar man fussing around on the platform that passes for a stage. He’s tall but slight and pale, and even from here, she can see how fidgety he is, black eyes skittering over the room, hands always jumping. She’s trying to place him when Vane walks directly into her line of sight, his broad body blocking her view of the stage.

“Hello to you too,” Max says.

“Came to hear us?” he asks.

“Yes,” Max replies. He nods, and then he sits down next to her.

“Jack always takes forever to make sure everything’s good,” he says.

“Is that what he’s doing?” Max asks. Rackham has been tapping at the microphone for at least a full minute, annoying everyone in the bar.

Vane shrugs. “I don’t know what he’s doing.” Max snorts into her glass, and Vane glances at her. Strange, looking at someone she once hated with all her heart and seeing only an awkward bear of a man, without any of the fury or grief that had once terrified her. His long hair is combed and tied back tonight, so for the first time, she can see his face properly. She realizes that he’s almost handsome, his skin rich and dark. His face is aged and scarred, but his eyes are still young.

“I did not know you were in a band,” Max says. “When did you join?”

Vane looks back at the stage. “Jack’s been bugging me to join forever,” he says. “Don’t have anything else to do, so I did. Couple years ago now.”

“Are you any good?”

Vane shrugs. “I don’t know. Don’t really matter.”

Max considers that and looks back at the stage. A woman has joined Jack. Her back is to the crowd, but her mouth is near enough the microphone that it’s picking up her words.

“-stupid, Jack, just stop fucking around and have a drink,” she’s saying. Vane laughs.

“Anne,” he says fondly. “Only girl ever beat me up.”

“Jack’s girlfriend?” Max asks.

Vane frowns. “Don’t ask me,” he says. “I don’t know. They’re fucking weird.”

They sit, drinking in companionable silence. The bustle of the bar is loud and warm around them, and it’s easy to relax. Once or twice, Silver drifts over, ostensibly to make sure they haven’t killed one another yet. When he finds that they haven’t, he drifts away again.

Eventually, Vane raises his drink to her wordlessly, finishes it, and puts his glass down. Max watches him make his lumbering way up to the stage and start tuning his bass. Smooth as water, Madi sits down in the seat Vane just vacated.

“Madi,” Max says, and feels a genuine smile break over her face.

“Hi,” Madi says, giving her a small smile back. Her eyes flicker to the far side of the bar, where Silver is chatting happily with a customer. He looks oblivious to their conversation, and Madi seems a little crestfallen at that, but Max knows better. Silver is attuned to them, and he’s probably itching to come over. He doesn’t, though, not yet. Madi sounds a little wistful when she speaks again. “How did that happen?” 

Max doesn’t know if she’s talking about Silver fitting so perfectly into the landscape of the town, talking to bargoers like he’s lived here forever, or their roommate situation. She chooses to address the former. “He’s charming,” she says simply.

“I know,” Madi says, shaking her head. “But I think you saw that a mile off.”

“I did.” Max shrugs and lights a cigarette. “I liked it. Do you mind?” she adds.

“No,” Madi says, watching her take a drag. 

Max exhales slowly, and takes a sip of her drink. “Everything I said is still true,” she says quietly, eyes fixed on Madi. “Even more true, actually.”

“Why do you say that?”

Max thinks, and then she speaks deliberately. “You both told me about your relationship,” she says. “But you both told me such different stories that I didn’t even recognize you. When two people don’t even agree on why a relationship ended, I think that means it should stay ended.”

“Hm.” Madi turns in her seat to look at the stage, where Vane, Jack, and the woman- Anne- are standing huddled together. “Who was right?”

“Right?”

“Who was right about why it ended?” Madi looks back at Max. Her face is inscrutable.

“Both of you,” Max answers.

Silver, finally, approaches them, his big tacky smile fading as he does. He places a drink in front of Madi, although she hasn’t ordered.

“You remembered,” Madi says.

“Of course.” Silver says this as if he made it through six states, made it through months and months, living off of his salesman’s smile and smoking with strangers, just so that one day he might be able to make Madi’s favorite drink for her. It makes Max ache to look at him, with his hopeful kicked-puppy eyes. Madi looks guilty and sad as she takes the drink, and Max is thinking that she must really miss him, to look so guilty.

But then Jack Rackham picks his banjo into a microphone, and Max and Madi both look to the stage, and Silver moves away to tend to another customer, and the moment is broken. The lights dim. For the first time, Max gets a good look at the band.

Jack is front and center, banjo strapped across his chest. Under the bright lights, he is sweating but excited. Vane is to the right, looking the most carefree Max has ever seen with his big hands holding his bass. Anne is to the left. She’s not as tall as Vane or Rackham, but her presence is just as imposing. She leans against a stool, her bow poised just above her fiddle. She does not look relaxed, like Vane, and she does not look excited, like Rackham. She looks coiled, every line of her body taut with potential energy, like if someone were to draw gentle fingers over her, the tension would snap, unleashing some unpredictable reaction. Her face is drawn, but handsome. Not a nice face, but a good one. Yes, a very good one.

The music is quick and pulsing, cheerful and heavy all at once. Jack Rackham sings high and plaintive as the wind, and Vane’s rumbling voice runs under it like a fast-moving river. The harmonies are simple with only two voices. Max isn’t focused on the vocals, though. Anne plays the fiddle deceptively easily, like the bow is an extension of her hand. She’s clearly excellent, better by far than both Jack and Vane at their respective instruments.

The set is short but energetic, the rabbit-heart songs drawing the crowd to shouting and dancing. Madi tugs Max to her feet, and Max wants to say no, but Madi’s eyes are alight with energy, so Max relents. It’s the most ridiculous uncoordinated dancing Max has ever done. It’s the first time in years that she’s danced just to sweat and whoop and fall into a friend’s arms, giggling, as the song ends.

The energy doesn’t die out when the set ends. The jukebox is cued up and belting cheerfully when the scattered applause fades. Vane and Anne come down to the bar, leaving Jack to clean up on stage.

“What’d you think?” Vane asks. He looks alive, flushed and glowing with sweat. 

“I loved it,” Madi says enthusiastically. “Where did you learn to play like that?”

Vane shrugs, but he’s obviously pleased. “Just picked it up,” he says.

Anne leans against the bar, not talking. It’s hard to tell if she’s even listening to the conversation between the three of them as she pulls down the brim of her baseball cap and drinks her beer. What is not hard to see is the way her bright eyes cling to Max. Max takes a certain measure of pride in that, a kind of  _ I still got it  _ satisfaction. But she decides not to do anything about it, not tonight. It doesn’t do to give anything away too soon. Besides, there’s a deliciousness in letting attraction steep, an anticipation that’s searing hot and biting cold all at once. When Vane and Madi bait each other into a game of pool, Max smiles at Anne, brushes fingers across the taut line of her shoulder, and says, “Let’s watch.”

Madi, it seems, is unbelievably competitive, and Vane can’t stand to lose. Max and Anne stand next to each other, shoulders not quite touching, each holding their drink, watching Madi and Vane bicker.

“You fouled,” Madi says. “You do not get to fucking go again, Charles, you fouled.”

“No I didn’t!” Vane points. “Look. I hit the eleven  _ after  _ I hit the five.”

“Are you blind? You hit it all the way across the table!”

“They will go on all night if we let them,” Max comments to Anne.

“Let ‘em,” Anne says, shrugging. “Least it’s fun to watch. Jack always beats Charles so bad he cries like a bitch.”

Vane straightens up from where he’d been lining up his shot. “I do not fucking cry,” Vane says, insulted. “And he don’t always beat me.”

“Yeah, he does,” Anne says, her tone leaving no room for debate. Vane huffs indignantly and takes his shot. He misses wildly, and Madi claps him on the back. 

Eventually, Jack comes over from the stage, looking terribly annoyed. “Every goddamn time,” he says. “Every goddamn time you people make me put away the equipment. I should kick you out of the band.”

“Yeah, you should,” replies Anne. Even as she teases him, she winds an arm around his waist and presses into him, leaving an empty, warm space between her and Max. Rackham, still looking disgruntled, puts his arm over Anne’s shoulders to hug her back.

Max goes over to the bar, where Silver is making little effort to hide that he’s staring at Madi. Max places her empty glass down, and the little clink gets Silver’s attention.

“Another one?” he asks.

“Mmhm.” Max leans with her back to the bar, watching Jack and Anne talk as Madi and Vane play. “You should relax.”

“I am relaxed.” Silver gives her his big smile. “See?”

“Seriously,” Max says, turning to the bar. “Stop obsessing. I can fucking hear you thinking. Relax, okay? We’re here to have fun.”

Silver grimaces as he sets a full glass down in front of her. “Yeah,” he says. “All right.”

They do have fun. Silver and Rackham shout stupid jokes across the room at each other. Madi beats Charles soundly at pool, which makes Jack laugh. Then she beats Jack, which makes Jack stare at the table in disbelief, and makes Silver laugh uproariously. Madi and Rackham debate loudly about folk music, and Vane throws darts by the bar, Silver yelling in his ear to distract him. Max lets Anne teach her how to aim a cue stick. She already knows how to play pool, which Silver knows, and he shoots her a grin as Anne puts her hands over Max’s. They’re good, strong hands, with hard, calloused palms and nails bitten to the quick.

The night is winding down, and at 2 A.M., Silver starts kicking people out. Max’s head is warm and hazy with alcohol. Anne is playing her fiddle again, something slow and lonesome, something Max feels in her chest. The six of them are the only ones left now, and the noise of the night is quiet. Vane is dozing on his stool. Jack is on the floor by the stage, where Anne is sitting and playing. They’re not talking. He just has his forehead rested against her knee as she plays. Silver is wiping down the bar, and Madi is sitting in front of him. They’re talking, quietly enough that it can’t be heard under the music. The noise of the night is quiet, but not silent. It’s a quiet that buzzes with love and heat. Max is overcome by a wave of fondness so strong that, for a moment, she thinks she might cry.

Jack, Anne, and Charles leave first, saying quiet goodbyes as they go. Max watches Anne’s eyes linger on her, and she gazes steadily back.

“Night,” Anne says. She’s so far across the room that Max doesn’t hear her, just sees the shape of the word on her lips.

“Good night,” Max replies.

The door swings shut behind them. The high, bright sound of the bell is out of place at the end of this night. Madi gets up from her stool.

“I should go too,” she says quietly.

“Are you okay to drive?” Silver asks. “I can-”

“I’ll be fine,” Madi says gently. A pause. “I’m glad I came.”

Silver wants to say something. Max can tell. But before he has a chance, Madi is pulling on her coat. When she leaves, the door, only open for a second, lets in a cold gust of air.

“You miss her,” Max says, resting her chin on her hand.

“Yeah,” Silver says. He looks at her, his face softening. He pours her a glass of water and hands it to her. “Drink.”

She drinks. “I’m glad you’re here,” Max says pensively. “Are you glad you’re here?”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he offers. Max smiles.

“Okay.” She puts her head down and listens to Silver moving around, cleaning up, getting ready to close. If Max was a humming kind of person, she’d hum the slow song Anne was playing. 

Silver drives them home. The moon is shining brightly, bathing the forest in light. Max thinks it looks almost romantic. Then she laughs.

“What?” Silver says.

“Happy V-day,” Max says. She’s still wearing the $20 ring, and she twists it on her finger.

Silver laughs, too. “It was a good one, right?”

“Very good.”

When they get home, Max just barely finds the energy to wash her face and take off her dress. She collapses into bed. She’s awake long enough to hear Silver still clattering around the house, to hear the trees rustling in the wind, to convince herself that she can even hear the windchimes, singing faintly on the breeze.

* * *

Thank you: for being here, and for being here that way, with so much closeness and presence and belief in me.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my north african silver agenda strikes again!
> 
> also, i think this a good place to say this: max's development in this fic isn't going to look exactly the same as it did in the show and i'm doing that on purpose. part of the point of this fic is to explore how max's arc might have gone if she had relationships with people she didn't in the show, or if the relationships she had were different from how they were. so all the thematic/character differences from canon are purposeful


	8. viii. NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, 1992

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for nongraphic discussion of a 16 yr old child involved in sex work, mention of disordered eating

When I was a child, it was clear to me that life was not worth living if we did not know love. I wish I could testify that I came to this awareness because of the love I felt in my life. But it was love’s absence that let me know how much love mattered.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _

* * *

The sun sets early this time of year. Max finds that there is a strange gap, in these late months, between the sunset and the night. It’s dark before 6 P.M., but the night won’t really come alive until around 9 P.M. So these three hours, these dinnertime hours, these family hours, Max spends wandering the streets. 

She’s come to know them very well, these gold-cobble streets. Max doesn’t think she technically counts as homeless, when she has a room that belongs to her in a house that belongs to her father. It’s a nice house. A nice room, even. But she does not have a key of her own. She isn’t welcome at the dinner table. Her clothes are all hand-me-downs from a sister who considers herself an only child. That house is not a home to her, not like these streets have been.

Max turned sixteen years old two weeks ago. It was a school day, but she wasn’t in school. She spent the day with a woman who calls herself Paris. Max is sixteen. It feels, somehow, much older than fifteen. It feels like she’s running out of time, like she’s overstaying what has always been a thin welcome.

On the night she turned sixteen, Max asked Paris to get her a job. 

“‘Course, honey,” Paris said. And that was that, and now Max is walking around with borrowed high-heeled shoes in her bag, waiting for her first shift to begin.

She managed to steal a sandwich from her father’s kitchen before she slipped out. She’s reconsidering now, though, wondering if it will be heavy in her stomach, or make her belly bloated when she’s supposed to be light and thin. But Max hasn’t eaten all day, and she’s hungry. She sits down on the curb and scarfs down the sandwich. Once it’s gone, she’s up again and walking, watching as the New Orleans nightlife unfolds around her.

When she reaches the club, it’s empty, unnervingly so. In the last couple of years, she has spent a lot of time in bars, clubs, lounges, all the nightlife available to a girl like Max. But she’s never seen a place like this before, lit too brightly, floor too empty, no music playing.

On the far side of the floor, Paris appears in a doorway.

“Come on back, honey,” she calls.

The changing room is almost familiar, although Max has never been in one before. The girls sit in front of mirrors, applying makeup, smoking, laughing, listening to music, yelling and joking with one another. It’s like a kickback at Paris’ apartment, except it’s all women, wearing six-inch pleaser heels.

They’re sweet, welcoming, and Max feels herself relaxing almost immediately. She doesn’t tell them how old she is, but they seem to know. Maybe Paris told them, or maybe they just recognize her youth better than most of the men she’s ever met, but they treat her like a little sister, giving her advice and touching up her makeup for her.

One girl leans forward, a crazy little light in her eye, a lit cigarette stuck between her lips. Max’s first thought is that she’s on something, but she’s clear-eyed, and she seems sober when she speaks.

“What’s your name?” she asks. Max opens her mouth, but the girl doesn’t give her a chance to answer. She reaches out a finger and hushes Max. “Don’t ever answer that question. Not if you wanna get out of here in one piece.”

Max blinks. Paris, from behind her, laughs. “Lilly, stop bothering her,” she calls.

“I’m not bothering her,” Lilly answers, a gleeful smile spreading on her face. “Just passing on my poor Irish grandma’s stories.”

“Not this shit again,” another girl groans.

“Hush.” Lilly draws herself up, taking a last drag on her cigarette before putting it out. “My grandma believed in the power of names,” she tells Max. “The second you give yours up, you give somebody a lot of power.” She leans forward. “Now, for my grandma, she lived in the woods. If anything ever walked out of those damn woods and asked her name, she answered in a way that wouldn’t piss it off, but didn’t answer the question, either. You know why?”

“Why?”

“‘Cause if she didn’t answer carefully, it would leave, get all its little redcoat friends, and English soldiers would burn out her house.” She leans back, nodding sagely. “Only give up something you know you can live without,” Lilly intones. “‘Cause you’re never getting anything back from this shit old world.”

“You’re crazy,” Paris says, her voice full of laughter. “Ignore her, honey.”

“She’s right on the name,” an older Spanish woman points out. “Remember, baby, don’t give out your real name to no one out here. But you know that, right? You look smart.”

Max nods mutely. The woman grins. “You’ll be all right,” she says. “I’m Lola. You just come to me if you need anything.”

It’s not long after that that Lilly has to go back to Boston to care for her ailing mother. Paris has a baby, and has to quit because of the toll it took on her body. One by one, almost all of the girls leave for one reason or another, and they’re replaced by fresh-faced, nervous girls that Max can’t believe she ever looked like. 

The rules are not hard to learn. It takes a long time to get good at playing by them, but she does. It becomes a mantra of sorts, to keep herself going, to keep herself in line. _ Only give up what you know you can live without. Because you’re never getting anything back. _

* * *

I’m starting to feel like empty is safer than love   
You gotta reach for me, man   
You gotta touch me and prove that I’m real   
‘Cause this life is beating me, man   
And I gotta give ‘em all something to feel

-Angel Haze, _ Dark Places _


	9. ix. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2003

When we choose to love we choose to move against fear--against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect--to find ourselves in each other.

-bell hooks, _All About Love_

* * *

Max has never liked hosting people at her home. It’s much easier to be on someone else’s home turf. Easier to be a stranger, offering only parts of herself that she can let anyone have. She knows Silver feels the same way, and so in the months they have lived together, they have not had a single visitor.

This has changed.

Madi comes over often. Her visits usually start with Max and Madi shut up in Max’s office, talking about the development initiative and the directions in which they want to guide it, but they always end in Madi staying for dinner, the three of them laughing and talking late into the night.

Vane, too, starts coming over frequently. With him, there isn’t as much talk. Usually, they just pass a blunt around, radio playing or TV on, Silver chattering. Companionable quiet, meaningless background noise.

But then Madi bumps into Vane when she’s leaving as he arrives, and they start arguing, of all things, about a book by Emma Goldman. Max has no idea who Emma Goldman is, and neither does Silver, but this is how visits with all four of them become a fact of life. Vane starts bringing Rackham around, almost absentmindedly, like he’d forgotten Jack was in his truck when he left the house and wasn’t going to turn around to leave him at home. And, of course, Anne and Jack are a unit, like twins for the way they stick together. Somehow, by the time the weather starts becoming warm, the six of them are thick as thieves. The house is full and cheerful, always lit up and welcoming.

Max is unused to so much warmth. She is unused to giving and then getting back. So is Silver, and so is Vane. Max knows this because she knows them. Although she doesn’t know Anne half as well, it’s easy to tell that Anne is unused to it, too. She laughs infrequently, and never talks. She stays at Rackham’s side always, unwilling to respond to Silver’s friendliness or Madi’s earnestness. The only clue that Anne ever actually wants to be there is the way she watches Max. Her eyes cling to her hungrily, as if she would be happy to sit and watch Max until she starved.

Max has been watched often in her life. She doesn’t care for it anymore, not in her own house. She did not open up her home so that she could be scrutinized.

It’s a warm Saturday night in April. Everyone came for dinner, and has branched off to their corners of the house. Silver, Max, and Vane are smoking cigarettes on the front porch. Silver is telling them a story about a group of teenagers who bought an ounce from him and immediately spilled all of it into the river, but Max is only half listening. Madi and Jack are audible from the living room, where, it seems, they’re on their favorite topic of conversation, the history and culture of rural American music. It occurs to Max that she doesn’t know where Anne is. This isn’t surprising, really, but it still doesn’t sit right with her. She goes inside. 

Madi and Jack are still talking spiritedly, much too energetic for a night like this, as far as Max is concerned, so she doesn’t stop to talk to them. She can hear faint music playing in the kitchen, though, so she keeps going. 

And there she is. Anne is perched on the counter, the radio nestled in her lap, face turned down to the floor. Her filthy old baseball cap is still on, and her tangled red-brown hair hangs long. She looks sad, although Max can’t see her face.

“What are you doing in here?” Max asks, leaning back against the doorframe. Anne jerks up like she’s been caught doing something wrong.

“Listening to the radio,” Anne says, quite unnecessarily.

“Yes.” Max steps forward and takes the radio from Anne, setting it on the counter. She feels, rather than sees, Anne’s eyes on her. “My radio. In my kitchen.”

Anne bristles. “I’ll leave then,” she snaps.

“You don’t have to,” Max says. “As long as I can listen with you.”

Confusion crosses Anne’s face. But as the silence stretches on and it becomes clear that it wasn’t a rhetorical question, Anne nods slowly. So Max pulls herself up onto the counter and they listen to the radio.

Max is good at this, at drawing out unsaid things by setting a particular kind of quiet. There’s an art to waiting in such a way that the other person finally can- or must- say what they have to say.

It’s somewhat unexpected that what Anne has to say is, “True you used to be with the cunt?”

“What?” Max says, surprised. “Eleanor?” Anne grunts in assent, and Max laughs a little.

“It’s not funny,” Anne says.

“No, sorry,” Max says quickly, forcing herself not to smile. “Yeah, it’s true. Charles told you that?”

Anne nods. “Why?”

“I loved her,” Max says after a moment. 

“Why?” Anne repeats.

“I just did,” Max replies. “I don’t anymore.”

Anne shakes her head. “Don’t know what a cunt like that ever did to deserve you. Or Charles.”

The ferocity of this sentiment surprises Max, but it touches her, too. She waits to see if Anne will get embarrassed or walk it back, but she doesn’t. She just glares at the floor, her anger palpable and hot with righteous loyalty.

“It’s all right,” Max says. “Really. I’m okay now. Charles is okay now.”

“Not all the way,” Anne says, quieter. “He’s not all the way okay.”

Max leans over, just a little bit, to rest her temple against Anne’s shoulder. She feels Anne stiffen, but she doesn’t move. Slowly, some of the discomfort seems to leave Anne’s body, evaporating like water on this warm spring evening. The windchimes are distant but audible, mixing with the sound of their friends talking indistinctly.

Anne has more to say. But Max doesn’t press.

Vane and Rackham leave not long after that. Anne goes with them, after a split-second of hesitation at the door.

Max goes upstairs to wash up and get ready for bed. She’s very aware that Silver and Madi are alone downstairs now. Neither of them have given any indication that anything more than friendship exists between the two of them, but Max knows them both too well for that. And sure enough, when she descends a few steps down the stairs, she sees them, angled towards each other like nothing exists but the two of them and the couch they’re sitting on, Madi’s leg thrown over Silver’s thigh, faces so close together that they don’t notice Max until she speaks.

“I’m going to sleep,” Max says loudly from the stairs. They jerk away from one another so quickly that they dislodge a blanket, and it falls to the floor as they stare guiltily up at her. 

“Good night,” Max says pointedly.

“Good night,” Madi says, sounding perfectly collected. Behind her, Silver is making a face at Max. She understands, plainly as if he says it out loud, that he means _stop fucking cockblocking me._ Max frowns back in false obliviousness, and Madi looks back at Silver. Quickly, he smiles innocently up at Max.

“Good night.”

Max rolls her eyes and goes back upstairs to her room.

The next day, Silver doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. He’s making eggs for breakfast, for both of them, which he has never done in all the time that they’ve lived together.

“Unbelievable,” Max says. “You cried on my couch for a fucking week about her.”

“And now there will be no more crying,” Silver says brightly.

“Right,” Max says. “That’s why she left before I woke up, right?”

Silver scowls. “We’re taking it slow,” he says. “But we’re together again. For real.”

Max sighs. “You’re burning your eggs,” she tells him. She goes outside to get the Sunday paper and sits on the porch to read it. Eventually, Silver comes outside defeated, holding two plates of toast with jam.

“I know it seems like it’s not going to work,” he says. “But I really think it’s going to this time. You know?”

Max doesn’t know, actually. But she doesn’t have the heart to tell him so, not yet, not with him looking so hopeful, carrying two plates of toast for them to share.

“Okay,” she says, conceding. “Okay.” She gives him the comics pages from the newspaper. They spend a lazy morning out on the porch before the midday sun drives them inside.

She decides not to meddle, at least for now, if only because it’s so nice to see Silver so honestly happy. Madi doesn’t bring it up when they have lunch together, and then she doesn’t bring it up again when they have coffee together, and again when Max drops by the library to talk to Mrs. Scott. She isn’t avoiding it, she just… doesn’t bring it up.

That’s fine, Max thinks. Madi is a private person. She isn’t a cruel person. Madi will talk about it when she’s ready, and her silence means absolutely nothing about how much she values her relationship with Silver.

Max comes home from work one afternoon to find Anne sitting alone on the porch, smoking a cigarette. Her long limbs are stretched out, as close to relaxed as Max has ever seen her. For once, the visor on her hat is upturned, letting warm sunlight touch her face. Her eyes are closed, although she must have heard Max pull in. She doesn’t watch Max as she comes up to the porch.

“What are you doing out here?” Max asks.

Finally, Anne opens her eyes. They’re a dark, deep blue, like the evening sky before it has been quite relinquished by sunlight.

“Jack and Silver decided to make dinner,” she says. “Made Charles help. I’m out here in case they burn the house down.”

“Silver is making dinner?” Max says. She sits down, sighing in relief as she pulls off her heels. “We will be getting Chinese tonight.”

“Jack can cook,” Anne says. “And Charles.”

Max laughs. “Charles can cook?”

Anne nods. “Don’t much,” she says. “But he can.”

“You didn’t want to help?”

Anne looks disgusted. “I don’t cook.”

“Never?” Max asks, smiling. “Not even for Jack?”

The expression on Anne’s face is so funny that Max has to bite her lip to keep from bursting into laughter. “No,” Anne growls.

Anne is still intensely untalkative. But Max is learning that she can hold a conversation in a different way. She lights Max’s cigarette for her, holding eye contact as her Zippo clicks open. She gets her fiddle from the car and plays it along to the ringing windchimes. There is still attraction between them, unspoken. But it is not unacknowledged. When Madi arrives for dinner, Max lets her go in first. Anne follows Max so closely as they walk inside that she can almost feel her against her back, solid and hot.

They sit by each other at dinner, feeling one another’s presence just a few inches away. It’s comfortable and tense all at once, the way Anne is, and Max is finding that it’s becoming easier to lean into it. She remembers when she first saw Anne, how much she’d wanted to see the taut string of Anne’s body snap. It hasn’t yet. She doesn’t want to be the one to break it, to step forward first and bring out whatever Anne has roiling inside her. She wants it to be given. She wants, for once, to be met where she is. She wants to fall in love in her own home.

The slow give and take between Max and Anne is almost enough for her to forget about Silver and Madi. Their courtship is impatient and uneven. Silver trails after Madi hopefully, brings her gifts and cooks for her even though he can’t cook. Madi thanks him gently, and sits carefully distant from him when all their friends are there.

It pains her to watch, the way Silver starts arranging everything around Madi. He wastes the minutes on his cell phone to talk to her. He cancels shifts and delays deliveries to be home on nights that she comes over. When they go food shopping, he buys things Madi likes. 

As Silver becomes lighthearted and hopeful, Madi becomes increasingly stressed. She still hasn’t talked to Max about Silver, but he clearly isn’t the only thing on her mind. The development initiative is moving forward, slowly but steadily, and Woodes Rogers is displaying less and less willingness to cooperate with Madi and Mrs. Scott. Madi is working longer hours lately, trying to mitigate the efforts of Eleanor, Rogers, and the mayor, but she’s having less success, and it’s interfering with her regular job as an evening school teacher. But still, she makes the effort to come to their weekend dinners, even though she’s always exhausted.

Max and Madi drive to the lake one day. Max brings a cooler of lemonade and watermelon, and Madi brings a blanket, and they sit on the edge of the water, shoes off and enjoying the sun. 

“We should’ve brought the others,” Madi says. Her pants are rolled up to her knees. She stands, ankle deep in the water, arms flung wide, as if to hug the whole world. It’s still not quite hot enough for that, and Max knows the lake water is still freezing cold, but Madi doesn’t seem to mind it.

“No,” Max says. She stretches out her legs where she sits. “I wanted to see you.”

Madi squints back at her. “I see you three times a week.”

Max leans forward and presses her forehead against her knees. When she looks up again, Madi is throwing a rock over the lake. It skips one, two, three, four times before it drops below the surface with a ripple.

“You’re acting different,” Max says. “Do you want to talk about it?” Just as she finishes speaking, Madi throws another rock. The only sign that Max’s words have gotten to her is a faint tremor in her hand. The rock skips only once.

“What do you want to talk about?” Madi’s voice is curiously flat. “John? Want to talk about how I was so fucking lonely and frustrated that I went back to him? Or how we said friends with benefits but he’s acting like my boyfriend again?”

Max doesn’t say anything. Madi drops down on the blanket, sighing as she stares up at the sky. “Or do you want to talk about how my best friend from high school, her dad, and her cop husband are trying to ruin my hometown? And they’re paying me to pretend to stop them?”

Max puts a comforting hand on Madi’s shoulder, but Madi keeps going, sounding angry now. “We could talk about both, even. How he doesn’t understand that this is always going to be the center of my life. That I can’t leave work just to have dinner with him. God, Max.” Madi props herself up on her elbow and looks at Max. “You know I don’t know anything about his life, before me? Nothing.” There are tears in Madi’s eyes now, and if she were anyone else, her voice would be shaking. “He told me that his past doesn’t mean anything, because his future is with me. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to be the future of a man with no past.” 

Madi rubs the tears from her eyes and flops onto her back again. She watches the sky, watches the heavy clouds slide by, and her voice sounds faint when she speaks again. “What am I supposed to do when he’s trying to give me his whole life and I can’t give him mine?”

There is nothing to say to that. Max lies down next to Madi and looks up at the sky. They lie there together, as if the sky might offer them some answers. Predictably, it doesn’t.

“I know he loves me,” Madi says quietly. “But why does he want so much from me?”

Max turns her head to look at Madi’s profile, her face open and sad. _Because you have a greatness and a goodness that he has never had in his life. Because you love many people, and are loved by many, but he has only ever loved or been loved with you. Because you are generous, and he is selfish._

Max says none of these things, although they are all true. She faces up again. The clouds drift slowly across the sky. They’re thick and heavy, but not gray yet. The humidity won’t break for days. The lake laps gently at the shore. Max dips her feet in as Madi wades out, splashing her and laughing. Madi tries- unsuccessfully- to teach Max to skip rocks. They drive home shouting along to the radio, Madi sitting on the blanket because she got soaked in the lake.

When Max gets home, it’s almost dark. Silver is sitting alone on the porch. The air smells like smoke, cut with the sweet smell of a springtime evening.

“Hey,” he calls. “Madi with you?”

“I dropped her off at home,” Max replies, closing the car door behind her.

“Mm.” Silver leans back in his chair. “You just missed Vane.”

Max chuckles lightly as she sits down in the rocking chair next to him, lighting a cigarette as Silver keeps talking.

“You know what Jack told me?” Silver’s about to launch into one of his ridiculous stories, and Max interrupts him before he can start.

“Silver,” she says.

He blinks. “Max.”

“I want you to know that you are my best friend,” Max says. She almost says something else, something like family, maybe, but she doesn’t. He understands anyway.

“Yeah,” Silver says slowly. “You too.” 

Max gets up. “Come on,” she says. “The mosquitoes are coming out.”

They go inside together. Max knows that one day, soon, Silver will not be so joyful, and he will need her to bring warmth to this house like he did last winter. But for now, she listens to his ridiculous story, and she loves him, and is loved back.

* * *

“What did you write in the letter?”  
Frog said, “I wrote ‘Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend.   
Your best friend, Frog.’”   
“Oh,” said Toad, “that makes a very good letter.”

-Arnold Lobel, _The Letter_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's just something about the profound love of friendship


	10. x. PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, 1985

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR tw for child abuse and racism

Where does this mean world cast its cold eye?  
Who's left to suffer long about you?  
Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag  
Past empty lots and early graves?

-Neko Case,  _ Deep Red Bells _

* * *

It has been a week since Max’s mother was buried, and no one has told her what is going to happen to her.

The women at the church are nice. They let her sleep on the pews, and they give her crusts of bread when she’s hungry. What she really wants, though, is to go home. But nobody seems to know where she lives, or is willing to take her, so Max brushes the dust off her dirty funeral dress and walks outside.

It’s loud outside, and the sun is shining. Max stops for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the bright heat of the day after being in the cool, dark church for so long. She makes her way up the street, and then stops. Max has gone to church with Manman before, albeit rarely, and she tries to think of how to retrace her steps. She turns left. Then she turns around and heads right.

Max becomes more and more confident as she walks. She starts recognizing buildings, street names, even some of the kids she used to play with. That feels forever ago, now. They wave hello at her, and she doesn’t wave back.

When Max steps in the door, Manman will be waiting there for her with a smile. She will scold Max for getting her clothes dirty from playing outside all day and tell her to wash before dinner. Even though she will pretend to be mad, she will let Max eat all the sweets she wants, and she will tell her stories before she goes to sleep. It won’t matter that Manman has no family to take care of Max, like the nuns have been whispering about, and it won’t matter that Max flatly refuses to go to an orphanage, because it will still just be the two of them, in their little house, up against the world.

But when Max turns the corner onto their street, the windows are dark. She pushes open the door, and when it swings open, all the furniture is gone. There is no food in the kitchen. It smells cool and musty. Manman is not here. It seems that this house has been empty for a long time, although it has only been a few days. It is hard to imagine how their whole shared life has just been scooped out, discarded somewhere far away, leaving nothing but a concrete shell.

The floor is hard and cool when Max lies down on it. It’s uncomfortable, but Max is so tired. She’s had nothing to eat today but a piece of bread, and she was walking for most of the day. She’s asleep within a few minutes, curled up on her side on the hard floor.

She’s awoken by a man, crouching next to her and shaking her awake. She recognizes him. It’s the man who comes to collect rent when Manman hasn’t paid in too long.

Max scrambles to her feet and says a polite good morning, but he isn’t listening. He yells over his shoulder in a language that it takes a moment to place as French. Then a white man she’s never seen before comes inside.

He stands at the door, looking almost uncertain as he studies her. Max lifts her chin and studies him right back. He’s wealthy, clearly, wearing a clean white button-up and leather shoes. He looks like a tourist.

The man kneels in front of her and says something in French. Max shakes her head and replies in Creole.

“I don’t speak French.” She says this without shame, like Manman always taught her.

The white man frowns, but he switches to Creole. He doesn’t speak it very well, Max notes. His speech is halting and broken. “Do you know who I am?” he asks.

“No.” Max doesn’t apologize, even though he looks annoyed.

“I’m your father,” the man says. He waits for a reaction, but Max doesn’t give him one. Manman always looked so sad when Max asked why she didn’t have a father, and pressing the question made Manman cry. Max resolved a long time ago that she didn’t need a father, and would never give one the time of day if that’s how he made Manman feel.

“You’re coming with me to America,” the man says at last. That gets a reaction.

“No I’m not,” Max says immediately. “I’m staying here and waiting for Manman.” The white man and the landlord exchange a look.

“You have to leave, honey,” the landlord says, and, for no reason at all, the endearment sends a prickle of fear through Max. “This is my house.”

“No it’s not,” Max says loudly. “This is my house and Manman’s house. And you have to bring us our stuff back.” Her fists ball at her sides, and she glares at the landlord. The white man takes her by the shoulders.

“Listen to me, Max,” he says. “I’m your father. You need to come live with me.”

“No I don’t!” Max yells. “You’re not my dad! I don’t have a dad!” She ducks under his arms and takes off running into the street. She doesn’t know where she intends to go- not back to the church, that much is certain- but it doesn’t matter, because she doesn’t get far. A pair of arms wrap around her middle and lift her up into the air. She screams, kicking her feet and beating her fists against the man’s arms, but he doesn’t relinquish her.

“Stop it right now,” he hisses in her ear. “You are acting like a child. You have nowhere else to go, unless you want to go to an orphanage.”

“Let me go!” Max shouts. He does, and she thinks she’s won, but he smacks her square across the face. She stares up at him in shock, one hand raising slowly to her stinging cheek.

“Are you ready to be good?” he asks. She nods quietly. “Good.” With that, he takes her hand and leads her back inside. He speaks with the landlord in French for a few minutes, and Max sinks to the floor. She hopes Manman is able to find her, even if she has to go to America.

The next few days are surreal. The white man- Max finds it impossible to call him father- takes her to a neighborhood she’s never been to before. They live in a hotel room. It’s nicer than any building Max has ever entered in her entire life, the air sharp and cold with air conditioning, buzzing at all hours with wealth. He leaves her there for most of the day with some food and strict instructions not to take anything from a little refrigerator in the corner. Max spends most of her time staring at that little refrigerator, wondering what valuables it must hold. When she finally opens it to see, she finds that it only contains bottles of alcohol, juice boxes, and candy bars. She closes it without taking anything, bitterly disappointed, and wishing she had left it closed. Better a mystery that she could wonder all day on than candy she can’t have.

One morning, the white man wakes her up, hands her a new dress, and tells her to take a shower. Max does as he says without protesting now, because he hits her when she doesn’t. Her hair is tangled and frizzy, and she looks at herself in the mirror regretfully. Manman always did her hair for her, so she doesn’t know how to do it on her own. She pulls the dress on and comes out of the bathroom to see the man sitting on the bed, waiting for her.

“Can you do my hair?” Max asks. “Manman used to use oil-”

“No,” the man says brusquely. “Find a hair tie and let’s go. We’re going to be late.”

Max can’t find a hair tie, so she has to follow him into a hired car, her hair a dull, dried out mess, wearing a dress that doesn’t fit. She sulks against the window. She has lived in this city her entire life, but the neighborhood she stares at from inside the car is unfamiliar.

“American consulate,” the white man says to the driver.

The American consulate, as it turns out, is a horrible place, full of hard-backed chairs and smelling like dusty air conditioning. She’s told to sit and not move for hours as the white man walks back and forth to the front desk and shuffles through papers in his lap. She catches a glimpse of her name, and says, “Hey. That’s me.”

“Yes,” the white man says. “This is your birth certificate.” He shows her, and there it is, written right across the worn paper in pen: Maxine Dauphin. Below it is written Nerlande Dauphin, and below that is Guillaume Leblanc.

“That’s you?” Max asks. “Guillaume?”

“Yes,” the white man says.

“Will I be Max Leblanc now?” Max asks. She hopes not. She likes her name. Manman told her it means heir to the throne. Max has always liked that, even though she isn’t sure to what throne she could possibly be an heir.

Even though she wants to keep her name, it hurts her feelings when Guillaume shakes his head curtly. He puts the birth certificate back in its folder. “No,” he says. “You won’t.”

The unfairness of it all is making Max’s stomach hurt. Why did he come get her, if he so clearly doesn’t consider her family? Why does she have to stay with him, when neither of them want her there? “Why are you taking me to America?” Max demands. “Why can’t I stay here?”

“Stop it,” Guillaume snaps. “I am not a man who abandons my child in this dump.”

“It’s not a dump,” Max says angrily. “America is a dump.”

He doesn’t answer, just shuffles his papers again and goes up to the desk. She thinks it’s to avoid her. She’s fine with that.

They go back to the consulate twice more in the next three days. The last visit ends in a victory, and he hands her a brand-new passport with a visa stamped into it.

“We’re flying in three days,” he says. “You’ll like it there. New Orleans.”

Max is positive she won’t.

Guillaume tells her about his other daughter. He seems very proud of her, like he loves her a lot. Max has never had a sister before, just like she has never had a father, but a sister never made Manman cry. For the first time, she feels hopeful. Maybe there is a family waiting for her in America, after all. 

Three days pass in the hotel. Max watches television all day, and Guillaume is always out. She doesn’t know where, and she doesn’t ask.

Max has never been in an airplane before. She plays with her seatbelt absently until Guillaume looks down at her with a look in his eye that signals her to stop. She does.

“Before we get there, a few things,” he says. “No more Creole. You will speak French to me and your mother.”

“She’s not my mom,” Max says, frowning.

“Don’t interrupt. Second-”

“I don’t even speak French,” Max interrupts. “If you-”

He slaps her. Max can’t help it. She bursts into tears.

“Stop making a scene,” Guillaume whispers, glancing around. “I am giving you a new life in a better place. I am giving you a place in my home. This won’t work if you can’t learn to give back. You will speak French to me. You will speak English to your peers. You will obey me. Understood?”

Max wipes her nose and struggles to get herself under control. She knows her tears only anger him, so she buries her face in her shirt in an attempt to ward them off.

Maybe he’s right. The past three weeks have been awful, but it’s easier to bear when she’s sleeping in a warm bed instead of a pew in Manman’s old church.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. She feels a little sick, giving up Manman for a warm bed, but her small body aches.

“That’s better,” he says, satisfied. When the flight attendant comes around, he buys her a soda.

Max sucks on the straw of her Coca-Cola, watching her city get smaller and smaller below her. She presses her fingers to the window and sends out a silent thank you for everything it gave her.

* * *

Without justice there can be no love.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i named her dad will whiteguy


	11. xi. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2003

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR TW: depiction of somebody binge drinking and passing out, mention of a relapse

Love isn’t something natural. Rather, it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.

-Eric Fromm,  _ The Art of Loving _

* * *

The summertime is so delicious it almost hurts to welcome it. It’s June now, sticky and lush, the entire landscape delighting in the sunlight. Summer is the loudest season, in the Ozarks, rented motorboats revving along the river, whooping teenagers blasting music by the water, fireworks bursting all season long, cars with license plates from different states speeding down the highway.

Charles and Anne find seasonal work hauling fish on a commercial boat. They bring fresh fish to Max and Silver often, wrapped in brown paper and twine. Jack will sear it with salt and black pepper and cayenne powder and lemon juice, Madi peering curiously over his shoulder. She will ask if maybe he shouldn’t add more spices, and Rackham will reply peevishly that he’s just trying to emphasize the flavor of the fish. Max will open a bottle of white wine, even though she knows Vane and Anne and Silver will only drink beer. Silver will make the salad, and it will take him 45 minutes because he’s more preoccupied with holding three conversations at once than with the food, and Madi will have to finish it anyway. Anne will play her fiddle in the living room. Vane will set the table, and when Silver asks him why all the plates and glasses are mismatched, he will shout back that it doesn’t matter, and Silver’s more than welcome to do it himself. Dinner will be a three hour affair, the wine flowing and the fish fresh and their laughter bursting like far-off firecrackers. 

Afterwards, they might split into twos and threes to talk or smoke or play music. They might all settle into the living room together to play cards, or to stretch out near one another as a movie plays, happy and sated, passing a blunt around. Max isn’t concerned with any of these possibilities, though. She doesn’t know where the rest of them are, and she doesn’t especially care. She’s pressed up against the wall in the kitchen, right out of the line of sight of the living room, the lights off, and Anne is kissing her.

Anne’s mouth isn’t timid, the kiss almost bruising with heat and impatience, the way Max expected it to be, but her body is. Anne’s calloused palms are so light in the way they cup Max’s face, and she doesn’t step close, her tense body just a few inches from Max’s. Max finds that delightful, the way Anne is so brash and so shy, demanding heat and reserved cold in the same moment, occupying the same space.

“How long have you needed to do that?” Max breathes, when they finally break, their foreheads pressed together.

Anne buries her face in Max’s neck and inhales, and Max laughs, petting her red-dark hair. “Never.”

Max’s hand stills on Anne’s hair. “No?”

“Never needed to. I wanted to,” Anne says, as if this is a very simple thing to say.

“What do you want now?” Max asks softly. Her eyes are fixed on some useless point on the far side of the kitchen, one hand on Anne’s waist and the other in her coarse hair, her breath shallow.

Anne doesn’t speak. She lifts her face to look at Max, and the tenderness in her expression is so clear that Max doesn’t even need to make her say it. Anne presses forward again, and this time, Max pulls them firmly together. Anne’s body is hard and lean under her shirt, but there’s a give to her too, the way she makes a soft, wanting noise when Max’s fingers press into her hips.

It isn’t overwhelming or thrilling. It doesn't knock her world off its axis. It doesn’t make her head spin or her feet stumble on unstable ground. In fact, when Anne looks at her, eyes clear, Max thinks that she has never felt so secure.

They don’t fuck that first night. But the next day, Anne comes over. She doesn’t call beforehand, and she doesn’t bring Rackham or Vane. Silver is out. Max stands on the threshold of her little house, and without either of them having to ask, Anne comes inside.

This is how it is between them, unhurried but insistent, pushing and pulling but always balanced.

One weekend, Anne takes Max to a small, gentle part of the river. It’s a warm, humid day, the kind of day where breathing feels more like drinking. It’s a relief to sit on a cool outcropping of rock next to Anne, watching her as she baits two hooks.

“Fish tastes better when you catch it yourself,” Anne explains.

“Better than when you steal it from your boss?” Max asks, and Anne snorts.

“Yeah.” Anne casts the line, and Max copies her.

“Now what?”

“Wait,” Anne says.

“Okay.” 

They wait for the fish. The day wears on. Max hands her rod to Anne. She leans over to cup riverwater in her hands, and cools her arms and her ankles. She lifts Anne’s hair and drips cool water on the back of her neck. It mixes with the sweat dampening the collar of her shirt, and Anne breathes out in relief. Max presses a kiss to Anne’s jaw and takes her rod back.

“Jack taught me how to fish,” Anne says. “And that was only the first time he saved my life.”

Max looks at Anne. She looks like she’s thinking hard on what to say next.

“I grew up rough,” Anne says, a little quieter. “Ate raw fish out the river. Slept on the porch so I wouldn’t piss off my pa. Jack was my friend from the time we were five. And a few years later he got me out, and I been with him ever since.” She breathes deeply. “Used to think I’d have to marry him just for that.”

Finally, Anne turns to look at Max, her eyes hard and burning. “I ain’t saving your life,” she says. “I just wanted to be here with you.”

What a strange and simple thing that is. Max watches her hands where they grip the rod inexpertly. “I’ve never done that before,” she admits. 

“What?”

“Been with a woman just… because we want to be together,” Max says softly. “Without keeping score in my head. Without being tied by debts or money. Without feeling like I could only be somebody when I was next to her.”

Anne doesn’t answer. She inches close to Max so that Max can lean against her, even though it’s much too hot out for that.

Their cooler fills up with fish, even one or two that Max catches. They drive home, windows all the way down, fingers linked loosely as Max drives and Anne leans out to let the wind buffet her face. Everyone is already home when they get there, the porch light on, a chorus of hellos rising from the living room as Anne hauls the cooler into the kitchen. Anne shows Max how to scale and gut the fish, her knife working quick and sure under the gold light that the back door is letting in. Max almost lets herself be enthralled by those capable hands. Then Anne puts the knife in Max’s hand and tells her it’s her turn to try.

Anne comes over often, now, even without Jack or Vane or Madi. Silver pretends Anne scares him, but Max thinks that’s probably more for Anne’s benefit than anything, notwithstanding Anne’s obvious capacity for violence. It’s easier for Anne to be affectionate with Max when Silver isn’t around, and Max doesn’t know how or if Silver knows that, but she’s grateful for the space.

Her career is taking a similar trajectory to her personal life, which is to say, upward. The agency is doing so well that they’ve actually hired a real secretary, and Idelle is interviewing new real estate agents. They’re perfectly on track to pay off the loans they’d had to take out. With the extra income from her position as a consultant to the Guthrie company, Max is more comfortable than she’s ever been in her entire life.

So far, the initiative comprises a plan to start construction on a mall in 2004, wrangling with state authorities for a casino permit, and certain riverside tracts of land earmarked for luxury housing developments. It’s this final plan that Max is most heavily involved in. It’s also the plan that Madi hates the most.

“People have lived on that land for generations,” Madi says in meetings. She’s spitting mad, but her composure is so airtight that only Max can tell. “You’re going to give them pennies to leave? Where will they go?”

“They will be recompensed fairly,” Andrew says. He’s from the Guthrie Corporation. Eleanor and Rogers don’t come to these meetings anymore, preoccupied as they are with the more glamorous political work of the casino and the mall.

“So this administration won’t extend a dime to poor people until they want their land,” Madi says tightly. “I see.”

As always, Max has to play mediator through the day’s meetings. But this time, Madi doesn’t let go of her anger when it ends.

“You know they’re driving those people out,” Madi says as they walk to the parking lot together. “They’re taking land they have no right to. They’re going to build nice houses there and you’re going to sell them to assholes.”

“It’s happening whether or not I help,” Max sighs. “Should I give up the only real stability I’ve ever had? Let someone else get rich instead?”

“Jesus Christ, Max.” Madi looks a little disgusted. “You know, at a certain point, you’re just letting this shit happen.” With that, she gets in her car and slams the door without saying goodbye.

Max is stunned for a moment as she watches Madi drive off. Madi is just stressed and tired, she reasons, and she lashed out. 

The thing is, she knows that isn’t true. But she shakes it off anyway, rolls down the windows and lets the radio play loud as she drives back to the office. Her new secretary greets her with the tinned, cheerful hello that they hired her for, and Idelle shows off new pearl drop earrings.

“It’s all looking up, huh?” Idelle says, smiling as she fingers the pearls idly. “I think this is gonna be a nice summer.”

It should be a nice summer. It’s supposed to be a nice summer.

Max comes home that day to find Silver slouched over in his favorite chair on the porch. The ashtray is full of roaches and cigarette butts, and a bottle of whiskey sits almost empty next to him. She hurries toward him and places a hand on his cheek. It’s cold and clammy under her palm. When his head lolls back, she sees that his eyes are bloodshot and almost closed. His skin, usually a deep russet brown, looks gray and sick.

“Oh, cheri,” Max says quietly. She’s never called him that before, but it slips out easily. “What happened?”

Silver’s eyes struggle open. They’re obviously so dry it pains him to have them open, and he closes them again. He says something unintelligible and slumps forward against her. He isn’t tall, but he’s broad, too stocky for her to support, and with great effort, she pushes him back into the chair.

“Silver,” she says, urgently now. “Open your eyes, Silver, answer me. Did you have anything other than weed and liquor? Did you take anything else?”

He tilts his face towards her. It’s eerie, with his eyes still closed and his face so sickened, but at least he’s responding. She asks him again, and this time he shakes his head.

“Okay,” Max says, relief flooding her. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

She goes into the kitchen and fills a pitcher with water. When she comes back, Silver is reaching down, towards the ashtray or the bottle she doesn’t know, but she kicks both out of his reach.

He grunts in protest, and she pours half the water over his head.

“Stay awake,” she orders. “You need to drink this before you go to sleep. Do you need to throw up?”

Silver doesn’t seem to understand the question, but he takes the pitcher when she gives it to him. Max sits on the arm of the chair, rubbing his back as he raises it to his lips. He hasn’t taken one sip before his body jerks oddly, and then he’s vomiting into the pitcher.

“There you go,” Max murmurs. “Get it all out, cheri, that’s it.” He makes an awful noise and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Vomit is smeared into his beard and on his hand, but he looks a little better already. 

Max goes inside and empties the pitcher into the toilet. She tosses it into the bathtub and then goes back to the kitchen, finds a new pitcher, and fills it up with water. Again, she brings it outside to him, and she rubs his back as he sips from it.

They sit there for almost twenty minutes, Silver taking little swallows of water, Max sitting quietly on the arm of his chair. He gets almost all the way through the pitcher before he won’t drink anymore, so Max takes it from him and sets it down.

“Let’s go,” she says gently. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Silver can’t stand up by himself, so the upstairs bedroom is out of the question. He leans heavily on her as they walk, and Max just barely manages to dump him on the couch.

Cheek pressed against the couch, Silver looks up at her. His eyes are still bloodshot, but he can keep them open now. He mutters something, his voice half-gone and his words slurring together. Max thinks he’s talking nonsense for a moment before she realizes that he’s speaking an unfamiliar language.

In another minute, he’s snoring. Max watches him for another minute to make sure he’s breathing properly. He is, and she’s about to leave to let him rest before she remembers the leg. He’ll be asleep at least until the next morning, she knows, and he isn’t supposed to leave it on for too long. After a moment of deliberation, Max kneels by the couch and takes the prosthetic off for him. He doesn’t even stir.

So this is how Silver behaves right after a breakup. There’s no doubt in her mind that that’s what caused this, and she’s heading to the phone to call Madi before it occurs to her that Madi might not want to talk to her after today.

Max calls her anyway. When Madi picks up, her voice is high and thin. Max wonders if she’s been crying.

“Are you okay?” Max asks.

“John told you?”

“No,” Max says, and leaves it at that. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Madi says, her voice small. “I wish I was.”

“I know,” Max says softly. She remembers this, the deep embarrassment of heartbreak. “I’m so sorry, Madi.”

“My own fault,” Madi says roughly. Max cannot remember another time when she could have described Madi’s smooth, composed voice as  _ rough. _

“It is not,” Max says firmly. “I don’t blame you. With everything you do every day… my God, Madi. I don’t blame you for wanting a soft touch.”

“Yeah,” Madi says, the word quavering. And then Madi is sobbing, great hiccuping tears, the kind that will hollow her chest out like a river, that will leave behind a dry, throbbing headache when she tries to go to sleep tonight. Max closes her eyes and listens to her friend cry.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this for the rest of my life,” Madi whispers. “I’ve been doing it so long, Max. Fighting even when I know we’re going to lose. And the worst thing is thinking I could have given it up for him.”

The world is a great and terrible love to have. It offers no compromises. Silver, then, a man of nothing but compromises, is impossible to keep.

Max sits on the phone with Madi for a long time. She offers many words of comfort, but they’re all empty, and both of them know it. But Madi seems to appreciate them anyway.

“I need to go and eat something,” Madi says. Max looks at the clock and realizes it’s past 8 P.M.

“Okay. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will. Thank you, Max,” Madi says sincerely.

It isn’t until the phone call clicks to an end that Max feels how tired she is, feels it in the aches of her back and wrists and the balls of her feet. She stretches, and her joints pop. Then she picks up the phone again.

Anne arrives so quickly after Max’s call that Max knows she was probably speeding to an absurd extent. Max doesn’t say anything, though, just throws her arms around Anne and buries her face in her chest.

“Hey,” Anne says, surprised. Her hands settle on Max’s body, one on her back and one cupping her head. The callouses snag on Max’s hair. “What’s wrong? Is Silver okay?”

“He’s crossed. He’ll be fine,” Max mumbles into Anne’s shirt. It smells good, and Max thinks on that, how far gone she must be already to think that cigarettes and sweat and men’s deodorant is a good smell. But it doesn’t matter right now, not at all, because she just wants Anne to hold her and kiss her and let her be a little sad.

Anne doesn’t ask her any more questions, just follows Max into the kitchen. Anne chops the vegetables, and Max fries the fish, and they eat well together.

They fall asleep late, sheets crumpled at the foot of the bed. Anne doesn’t like cuddling, really, but she has a compulsion to be touching Max at all times, their ankles and calves crossed or their fingers linked or Anne’s arm thrown over Max’s bare stomach to squeeze her hip. 

Max is awoken by the sound of running water downstairs. The clock reads 4:49 A.M. Anne is still fast asleep next to her, bare, freckled back striped with moonlight from the window. Gently, Max moves Anne’s arm from on top of her, and Anne snuffles into her pillow but does not wake up.

Max ties her robe on and goes downstairs. The lights are off, and she finds Silver standing at the sink, gulping down a glass of water. He looks up at her.

“Hey,” he rasps.

“You should let me know if you plan to lose your shit,” Max says. “Should I get CPR training? Or start keeping Naloxone?”

“Jesus, Max,” Silver mutters. “No. Don’t say shit like that. This was a mistake. And I didn’t take any hard shit.”

“Today,” Max says flatly.

“Ever,” Silver says firmly. “I just got carried away. Won’t happen again.”

Max steps forward, searching his face. He still looks like shit. “Don’t do that,” she says, quiet now. “You still have people, Silver.”

Silver huffs out a breath of sardonic laughter. “Right,” he says bitterly. “Best friends.”

“Stop it,” Max says sharply. “You aren’t alone and I won’t let you act like you are.”

Silver looks away. “You know me better than anyone, you know that?” He sounds utterly defeated. “You saw this coming, didn’t you?”

Max doesn’t answer. Silver laughs again, and if he wasn’t so exhausted, it would sound mean. “I thought, if you were still pining, if you were still a mess, then it would be fine that I was too. But you’re happy. Anne likes you. You’re making money. You’re doing everything you wanted to do. I think maybe I just wasn’t made for that.”

“Made for what?”

“I don’t know,” he says faintly. “Whatever it is that makes Madi so… good. Whatever it is that keeps Vane and Jack and Anne together and still standing, after all the shit those three have been through. I just can’t get used to it. I don’t understand it.”

And that feels like a kick in the chest, because maybe Silver doesn’t know what he means, but Max does. It’s the love of a friend, a family, a community, the strength that it lends, the compassion it breeds. Love, a lack of which made Max grow up alone and jagged and mean. 

Silver shakes his head. “Never mind,” he mumbles. “I think I’m still drunk.”

Max steps forward again. He looks at her. “I know we never had it before,” she says. “But we have it now.”

Silver closes his eyes like he can’t bear to hear it. Then he steps forward and hugs her awkwardly. It’s hardly a second before he pulls away, but Max feels warmth bloom all over her body.

“You were talking in a different language earlier,” she says, leaning back against the wall as she watches him fill up his glass with water.

“Okay,” Silver says.

“What was it?” she prompts.

“Probably Arabic,” he answers after a moment. 

“Probably?”

Silver shrugs and drinks his water. “I speak six languages,” he says.

“Are you serious?” Max asks, incredulous.

Silver snorts. “Why would I lie?”

“You lie all the time,” Max points out, and Silver laughs.

“Okay,” he says. “I guess that’s fair. I’m not lying, though.”

“Where did you learn six languages?”

“Around,” Silver says, shrugging. He finishes his glass and fills it up again. “It’s easy for me to pick things up. Accents, languages.” He pauses. When he speaks again, it’s in a perfect imitation of Max’s accent. “I could probably do yours in my sleep.”

“What the fuck,” Max says, unnerved. Then she squints at him. “Your American accent is fake, isn’t it? Is Arabic your first language?”

He smiles at her and drinks his water. Then he says, “Want to teach me Haitian Creole? We can talk shit behind everyone’s back.”

“No,” Max says. Silver makes a face at her.

“No fun,” he says. “I guess we could use French, but I hate French.”

“I am going back to bed,” Max informs him. “You should finish sleeping off whatever the fuck happened yesterday.”

“Yeah, whatever. Night, Max.”

Max leaves him in the kitchen. Upstairs, the air is thicker, hotter. The gray of sunrise just barely lightens the sky. She tugs off her robe and crawls back into bed. Anne shifts, and her eyes open.

“Max?”

“Hush, love, I’m here,” Max says softly. Anne closes her eyes again, and her hand seeks out Max’s body. Max resettles herself, watching Anne, the severe lines of her face softened in sleep, the callouses on her hand drawing pleasant, tingling lines on Max’s skin.

Madi doesn’t come for dinner that week, although Max assures her in no certain terms that she is, of course, still welcome. It doesn’t feel entirely complete without her, but Madi tells her that she thinks she would be better off not seeing Silver for a while, and Max doesn’t blame her.

Charles asks after Madi at dinner. Jack, unsubtly, kicks him under the table. Max smiles diplomatically and says that Madi wasn’t available tonight. Silver is too good of an actor to show much more emotion than a slight stiffening in his hands, but Max notices it.

“Oh,” Vane says, frowning. “I was gonna give her book back.”

“Anyway,” Rackham says, too loudly. “Max, we might need to hire you soon.”

“Are you moving?” Max asks, going back to her food.

“Might have to,” Rackham sighs. “Landlord plans to double the rent. Not sure who he thinks he’s fooling, honestly. It’s a shithole. Only positive is the river is in the backyard.” 

“I hate my fucking landlord,” Charles says, stabbing at his food with more force than is strictly necessary. “He’s doing the same shit. What happened to the fucking days when we was chopping their heads off?”

Anne snorts into her beer, Max gives her a look, and she shrugs.

“Well, they can’t raise your rent until the lease is up,” Max says.

“Ours ends at the end of the summer,” Rackham says, grimacing.

“Mine is month to month,” Vane says. He pauses, looking thoughtful. “I should drive the motherfucker’s trailer into the river. See how he’ll charge me rent to pitch a tent on his land.” At that, both Silver and Anne start laughing, to Max and Jack’s chagrin.

“Charles, any time you want to offer a helpful solution, we’ll be here,” Rackham snaps. He is, unfortunately, not an intimidating man, and it just makes Anne laugh harder.

“Didn’t he?” Silver asks. “I mean, it’s not like killing your landlord wouldn’t work.”

“Be careful, Silver,” Max says mildly.

“Just kidding,” Silver says, grinning, and Vane bursts out laughing.

Silver, to Max’s surprise, actually seems to be handling things well, albeit his immediate bad reaction. He still smokes most days, but he’s stopped drinking so much. He’s trying hard to act like his old self, especially around Anne, Charles, and Rackham. Sometimes Max sees through it, sees that he’s covering up unhappiness, and on these days she rents a shitty low-budget horror movie, like old times. He won’t want to talk about it, not really, but they’ll joke and eat chips and smoke like teenagers, and it cheers him up.

It isn’t going to be a nice summer, but it might still be a good one, she hopes. She’s even able to hold onto this hope as the months slip idly by.

The phone blares suddenly through the quiet August night. Max jolts awake and groans when she sees that it’s 5:52 A.M. Who could possibly be calling her at this time? she thinks blearily, stumbling downstairs. If Silver has started giving out her landline instead of his cell number, she will fucking kill him.

Silver is, incidentally, already awake, or maybe still awake. Max has long stopped trying to make sense of his sleep schedule. He’s leaning against the wall, cord wrapped around the doorframe from the kitchen, talking lazily into the phone.

“-don’t know who you are, Max has never said that name to me in her life,” Silver is saying. He sees her on the stairs and grins, pointing to the phone and mouthing  _ Eleanor.  _ “Yeah, this is her husband, actually. Just so you know, I’m unstable and I shoot people who annoy me, so you better have a good reason for calling at six in the fucking morning-”

Max can hear it from several feet away when Eleanor screams, “Just give her the goddamn phone!”

“Chill out,” Silver says, unfazed.

“Enough,” Max says. She takes the phone. “Eleanor?”

“Since when are you married?” Eleanor says.

“I hope you didn’t call me to ask me that,” Max says.

Eleanor huffs in annoyance. “Never mind. Go get the newspaper.”

“What?”

“Go get the fucking newspaper,” Eleanor says furiously. “And I need you to explain to me what the fuck she was thinking.”

Max sets the phone down. As she brushes past Silver, she pokes him in the chest. “Don’t annoy my coworkers,” she says.

Silver flops onto the couch, taking his blunt from the ashtray and unmuting the television. “Annoying your ex is fair game, though,” he says as she opens the door and goes out to fetch the newspaper. “Did she wake you up just to tell you to bring the paper inside? Was she gonna steal it?” He guffaws, pleased with his own joke.

Max isn’t listening anymore. She turns on the light in the kitchen and spreads out the newspaper. Emblazoned across the front page is a picture of Madi and Mrs. Scott, Mr. Scott standing behind them. The headline reads,  _ CONSULTANTS TO THE MAYOR CONDEMN DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM. _ Words like  _ nepotism, gentrification,  _ and  _ corporate pandering  _ jump out as Max scans the article.

“Well?” Eleanor demands. “What the fuck?”

“Calm down,” Max says evenly. “They don’t have anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Eleanor says shrilly.

“Stop panicking,” Max orders. “It makes you look guilty.”

This, finally, makes Eleanor shut up. She takes a deep, shaking breath, and when she speaks again, she sounds calmer. “You didn’t see this coming?” she asks. “I thought you and her were friends.”

“We haven’t talked that much lately,” Max says. That fact sours her stomach. She assumed Madi had been distant because of Silver. She wonders when Madi lost so much confidence in her.

“Never mind, then,” Eleanor says dismissively. “What are we going to do about this?”

“We?” Max asks. “Eleanor, this isn’t my job. I’m helping you plan for the housing developments. Not defend the initiative to the entire town. This is some bad press, that’s all. There’s nothing damning in here, no emails or contracts published. Keep your head down and let it blow over.”

“That’s not good enough,” Eleanor says flatly. “Meet us at the office at 9 A.M.”

Max is opening her mouth to reply that she cannot come to the Guthrie Corporation’s office first thing in the morning, because she has an agency of her own that she needs to prioritize, and that she has absolutely no desire to get involved in whatever PR nightmare that they’re about to dream up, but she never gets the chance. Eleanor hangs up, and the air between them goes dead.

Max presses her fingers against her eyes, breathing deeply. Then she goes back out to the living room, where Silver is puffing contentedly on his blunt. He looks up at her.

“Everything okay?” Silver says. 

Max shrugs and collapses onto the couch next to him. She holds out a hand wordlessly, and he passes her the blunt. She takes one good hit and then gives it back.

“Put that out,” she says. “I can’t smell like weed when I go to work.” She gets up and starts making her way up the stairs.

Silver’s brow furrows. “What was Eleanor calling about?” he asks.

“Don’t make any noise!” Max yells downstairs. “I need to get some goddamn sleep!”

She throws herself into bed, but as the sun brightens the room around her, Max has to accept she won’t get back her lost hour of sleep. Instead, she stands in the shower for probably longer than she needs to, preparing herself for what she already knows is going to be a bad day.

When Max comes downstairs, Silver isn’t there, maybe finally having gone to bed. Half a blunt is sitting in the ashtray on the coffee table. For a moment, she entertains the idea of stealing it, smoking it on her morning drive with the windows down, walking into the Guthrie Corp. meeting with her hair loose and smelling loud. 

She doesn’t. Max makes her slog to the Guthrie offices cold sober. The morning heat is thick and soupy already. The blast of corporate air conditioning when she steps inside only makes the sweat under her arms feel more pronounced. She’s suddenly glad that she wore a dark top.

The meeting room is almost empty. She knew it would be, at a quarter to nine. The only people who have yet arrived are a couple of Guthrie’s aides, Eleanor, and Woodes Rogers. Max takes her seat on the far side of the table, pointedly ignoring Eleanor’s gaze.

“Good morning, Miss Dauphin,” Rogers says coldly.

“Good morning, Sheriff Rogers,” Max says, smiling placidly back. “Did you have a good weekend?”

Rogers ignores the question. “It’s nice to see that you’ve decided that the work you’ve been paid for for the last eight months is in fact a job.”

Max looks back at him. There is no pleasantness or pretense of politeness in his expression. “It is nice to see our sheriff making the building of tourist attractions his job,” she says, saccharine sweet. “Really, it’s high time our law enforcement expanded their influence.”

He half rises from his chair. Eleanor grabs his arm, but he doesn’t even look at her, staring icily at Max. “You have gained so much from this endeavor,” he says, barely controlled. “Your business, your connections, your personal wealth, I know for a fact have all grown immensely based on your connection to this initiative. You have absolutely no right to make a name for yourself by exploiting your relationship to my wife and then opt out of fixing problems when they arise.”

Max smiles politely. “And what, exactly, is my relationship to your wife?” she asks. 

He gapes at her, and Eleanor, hurriedly, cuts in. “All Woodes is trying to say,” she says, placating, “is that we need everyone to be completely committed to this initiative if it’s going to survive.”

“Of course I am committed to the initiative,” Max says coolly. “Was that your only question?”

“I expect you to stay committed,” Rogers says. Slowly, he takes his seat. “If you intend to profit, you will offer your unconditional assistance.”

Max knows she has to let him have the last word if she wants her position here to remain on stable ground. It’s a compromise she has always been happy to make. Why, then, does she need to grit her teeth to make it now?

The meeting is long and predictable. It is not a devastating attack, the article containing no proof of the more ethically questionable details of the initiative. It’s an overenthusiastic rookie journalist and a few whistleblowers who were never privy to the most damning information. In short, the article is an unfortunate media blip that will pass, if handled properly, and to Max’s relief, there are plenty of people employed at the Guthrie Corporation capable of doing so.

An hour into the meeting, a secretary pokes her head in through the door. “So sorry to interrupt,” she says. “Is there a miss Max Dauphin in here?”

“What is it?” Max asks.

“Um, you have a call from someone named John. He wouldn’t give a last name, but he said you’d know him.” The secretary looks like she strongly disapproves of this, but she soldiers on. “He says it’s urgent.”

Every eye in the room is on Max now. Max isn’t looking at Rogers, but she can imagine his expression, just waiting for another point to stack against her.

“Tell him I can’t be interrupted,” Max says briskly. She turns back to the man who was speaking and nods for him to continue. After a moment, he does, and the secretary leaves quietly.

Max doesn’t get back to her office until past 11 A.M. As she walks in, Idelle looks up and says, “Where have you been?”

“Guthrie office.” Something in her expression must warn Idelle off from saying anything else, because she doesn’t.

Max closes the door and sinks into her office chair, sighing. She’s about to call Madi, ask why the fuck she didn’t at least warn her that she was planning on jumping ship like this, but then she remembers Silver’s call. He’s never tried to reach her at work before, ever, not once in almost a year. She calls Silver first. His phone rings for a long time, but he picks up eventually.

“Silver.”

“It’s Max. What was so urgent?”

She hears a rustle, and then, distantly, Silver’s voice talking to someone else, something like  _ it’s Max _ . A pause. Then he lifts the phone to his ear again and speaks. “You need to come to Jack and Anne’s.”

“Why?” Max asks, surprised. Worry is starting to nag at her.

“It’s a lot to explain,” Silver says tiredly. “All right? I think you should come here right now.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Max snaps. “What the hell is going on?”

“Fine,” Silver snaps back. “Vane got evicted. He relapsed. Jack and Anne brought him back to theirs. Anne left last night and never came back. Nobody’s seen Anne, Jack is freaking out, Vane is sick, Madi’s trying to keep everything together and she won’t let me help her, so I need you to come here right fucking now. Okay?”

Max is vaguely aware that she’s gripping the phone too hard. “Okay,” she says numbly. “I’ll be right there.”

The bright, hot sky feels mocking. Max knows she’s speeding, but she can’t make herself slow down, white-knuckling the wheel and wishing her stupid ancient car could go faster. The cheerful Ozark summer rushes past her, the babble of the river loud even under the wind.

* * *

The truth is, far too many people in our culture do not know what love is. And this not knowing feels like a terrible secret, a lack that we have to cover up.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope this disclaimer isnt necessary but: if u find somebody w the symptoms of alcohol poisoning Call an ambulance 
> 
> anyways
> 
> not pictured: silver clowning max for exclusively dating ugly white women


	12. xii. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2001

But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.” The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity.

-Paulo Friere,  _ Pedagogy of the Oppressed _

* * *

It’s an ugly building. Max knows that. It was even ugly two weeks ago, when they’d signed the lease to rent the office space. It’s squat and concrete gray, speckled with windows that seem far too small to let in any meaningful amount of light. A depressing little box, looking surprised and awkward with the parking lot half hidden behind it. The sky is an overcast gray today. Somehow, the office building matches the day’s mood perfectly and also looks completely out of place, nestled off the road among the trees.

“It’s nice,” Idelle offers.

It’s not. “Come on,” Max says, and the three of them walk inside.

It is, officially, Crown Realty’s first day of operations. It took a long time for them to scrape the resources together to start the company, but now here they are, and Max thinks they’re better for the experience they’d accumulated in the meantime. Max is a real business owner. Sure, maybe the bank owns more of her life right now than she does, with the loans and the mortgage, but Max decides to give herself this leeway. She is a business owner.

It’s hard, being a business owner. She works 70, sometimes 80 hour weeks. She wakes up before the sun rises and doesn’t return home until after it sets, and often goes days at a time without feeling sunlight directly on her skin. She works nights and weekends, she works whether or not Idelle and August are beside her, she works until her back and eyes and wrists ache, until she physically can’t stand it for a single second longer.

So, yes, it’s hard. Max never goes out anymore. She loses touch with all the friends she once had. Even Idelle and August feel distant now.

It’s worth it. Her cold, empty house is worth it. Her aching hands are worth it. Max has gone without before, gone without a bed or a meal or the warm company of a friend. If she has to go without now, on the brink of all the stability and wealth that she’s never had in her life, then that is exactly what she will do.

Slowly, the wet spring sky warms the Ozarks, the way a hot breath on skin feels damp. Max notices it almost in her sleep, the way her old house creaks under the rain, how the river looks swollen and blue on her morning drive. The swampy heat is stifling, but it’s good. Business picks up, with out-of-towners calling in to rent vacation homes for the summer. Max thinks, strangely, randomly, that this humidity has been the only constant in her life. The fact that, in the Ozarks, this thick heat is cut with months of biting cold makes it strange when it returns.

Max voices these thoughts to no one. Even if she wanted to, she thinks it would just confuse Idelle, or worse, worry her.

So this is Max’s life. Sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep, a symmetrical, unending cycle. Stable. It is not interrupted often, these first few months.

Max’s phone rings late at night. She supposes it’s not really late, just past 10 P.M., but it’s late for her. It is the small gap between  _ eat  _ and  _ sleep,  _ and normally, nothing fills it but the white noise of the television and the distant-sounding windchimes.

“This is Max.” Her throat is dry, after her long workday. Max clears her throat to bring back the smooth voice she uses with clients. “Speaking?” It doesn’t work.

“Hi, Max.” She’s quiet, and she doesn’t identify herself, but Max knows that voice. She still knows it. She wonders if she’ll ever not know it, if that need has burrowed under her skin without caring if she wants it there.

“Hi, Eleanor.” Max leans back against the doorframe. She concentrates on the old dark wood of the doorframe, the hairline cracks that run through it like aged brown skin. She reaches out with one hand and presses against the strip of wood, anchoring herself in this doorway between the living room and kitchen as if she fears something will sweep her away.

“How have you been?” Eleanor’s voice crackles over the phone, hesitant but calm.

“You know.” Max pins the phone between her shoulder and her ear and gropes for her cigarettes. She doesn’t care about the rasp of her overused voice anymore. The first inhale she takes calms her.

“Not really,” Eleanor says, trying for a laugh. “We haven’t talked in a long time.”

They haven’t. Eleanor never tried to call, and Max, humiliated by the knowledge that she was waiting for Eleanor’s call, didn’t either. Max studies the burning cigarette, the orange glow at the tip, the black of the burning paper, the smoke curling towards the ceiling. She takes another drag, feeling the warmth deep in her chest and trying to cling to it, trying to use it as a shield. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know.” Eleanor sounds mournful. “I was just thinking of you.”

Max waits. Eleanor went to all the trouble to look up her number, and Max isn’t interested in making this easy for her.

“I hope you know it wasn’t your fault,” Eleanor says, after entirely too long. “What happened, I mean.”

“Of course I do,” Max says, her voice sounding cold even to herself. “It is not my fault that you chose your company over me. It’s yours.”

“Yeah.” A staticky pause. “I wanted to stay with you. I loved you. Do you believe that?”

The awful thing is, she does believe it. It’s just that love has never meant much to Eleanor, not compared to her grand plan.

“Why now?” Max asks hoarsely. “Shit, Eleanor, two years.”

Eleanor is honest with her, as always. “I got engaged today,” she says, very quietly. “I’m going to be promoted at the end of the year. I’m getting what I wanted.”

“I thought you wanted to change things,” Max says. She almost goes on, almost says,  _ I thought you wanted me. _

“I am,” Eleanor says. She laughs a little. There’s no joy in it. “What I wanted, it doesn’t look how I thought it would.”

“So, what is this?” Max says. She can’t find it in herself to be angry. “Is this just to tell me that letting me go was all you needed to do to get everything you wanted?”

“I think you knew that already,” Eleanor answers baldly, and Max almost laughs. 

“I guess I did,” she says.

“I don’t know why I called.” Eleanor hesitates. “I guess I wanted to thank you. For everything you gave me.”

“Fuck you, Eleanor,” Max says. It comes out so easily that it sounds almost friendly.

They’re quiet for a long time. Max presses the back of her head against the doorframe, and she breathes in time with the house. Outside, it starts to rain.

“Could I call again?” Eleanor asks. Max doesn’t answer for so long that she hears Eleanor start to fidget. “I want to be friends, Max.”

“Friends,” Max repeats.

“Yeah.” Eleanor is steeling herself. Max can tell even through the phone. “I miss you.”

“You already gave me up,” Max reminds her. 

“I know.” A pause. “I’m not asking for you back,” Eleanor promises. “I just… want to talk sometimes.”

The rain is gentle, but it’s sending in a draft through the back door. She always forgets to close it, leaving nothing but a flimsy screen to stand between the inside of her kitchen and the great cold Ozarks.

“Okay,” Max says. “We can be friends.”

Eleanor’s relief is palpable. For a while, she makes stilted conversation. For a while, Max makes it back, but she’s tired, and the cigarette isn’t keeping her warm anymore. She lets the talk fizzle out. Eleanor hangs up first.

Max puts out her cigarette. She closes the back door, but it’s still cold and drafty inside.

On the ever-lengthening list of things that Max does not confide in Idelle, the phone call with Eleanor leaps to the top. Idelle doesn’t like Eleanor- thought she was a bitch in high school, apparently, and her history with Max has done nothing to raise her in Idelle’s estimation. Max knows Idelle would just make a face and prod, albeit gently, about  _ I don’t know if that’s a good idea  _ and  _ what could she really want from you, after all this time? _

Nothing, it seems, at least, not yet. They speak on the phone semi-regularly, about silly things, about Max’s busy schedule and Eleanor’s new fiancé. It means nothing. Certainly, it doesn’t mean that they’re friends.

Max thinks about it, about inviting Eleanor over for a late dinner, about enticing her, plying her with good food and sweet talk and the warmth of her neck, exposed to Eleanor as Max bends over her to pour her a glass of wine. She could do it. She knows she could do it, force Eleanor to finally give her something back.

She could even hide it from Idelle, afterwards. Rub makeup over the love bites Eleanor likes to give, walk into work pretending she’s had enough sleep. Idelle wouldn’t notice. It’s then, with a stunning, cold sadness, that Max realizes that she and Idelle are not close anymore, not like they used to be.

Max doesn’t seduce Eleanor, not this time. Semi-regular phone conversations become regular. And then, for no reason at all, they become semi-regular again, and then infrequent. And then, by the time the winter sets in, bleeding the warmth from the air, the calls are rare.

How easy it is for Eleanor, to drift in and out of Max’s life, making everything shaky and unbalanced. How easy it is for her words to stay stuck under her skin like some awful intrusion, hard and cold and never warming to the hot blood that rushes around it. 

Well, Max thinks, if Eleanor will insist on being present and not, being together and not, she will take the lesson as it comes. 

Love, it seems, can be missed, coveted, flirted with. It can even be clung to for far too long. The only foolish thing to do, with love, is to choose it.

The winter is cold this year. Max has never felt quite so alone in her life.

* * *

Society’s collective fear of love must be faced if we are to lay claim to a love ethic that can inspire us and give us the courage to make necessary changes.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _


	13. xiii. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2003

Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.

-James Baldwin,  _ Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone _

* * *

It’s hard to tell, exactly, who she should focus on when she steps inside. Jack, as always, demands attention, looking almost like a bereaved widow, with his rumpled hair and wet eyes. Silver isn’t jittery (she’s never known him yet to be jittery), but he’s moving, making sandwiches nobody is eating, tidying Jack’s artfully messy living room, trying weakly to add to a conversation he clearly doesn’t know what to do with. Madi, by contrast, is still, speaking in calm tones to Vane and Jack, but neither of them are answering her in a way that really matters, and Max wonders if anyone else can see the strain pulsing under Madi’s skin.

In the split second before Max has to speak, she stands on the threshold, feeling the tiny gust of wind at her back as the door swings shut behind her.

“Nice of you to get here,” Rackham says angrily. 

“Is now the fucking time, Jack?” Max says, bristling. “I came the second I found out what was happening.” Her eyes fall on Vane. He does look sick, and smaller than usual. His attention is fixed on a book, wearing long sleeves in August, his brow sullen and his shoulders high. He isn’t talking to anyone, and Max can see that his eyes aren’t moving along the page.

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” Madi says, her voice carefully measured. Max makes eye contact with her, and reads the message there clearly:  _ We don’t need to talk about this right now. _

“What happened?” Max says, turning her attention to Jack and Vane. 

“Charles got here the other night,” Jack says, running a hand through his hair. “He didn’t tell us what happened until yesterday, about the eviction. Anne looked at me, said she was going to kill him, and left.”

“Kill who?” Max says, alarmed. “You didn’t stop her?”

“Are you fucking serious?” Jack demands. “Me? Stop Anne? What did you want me to do, hide the fucking car keys? Besides.” His voice drops suddenly, and his gaze flickers towards Vane. “I couldn’t leave.”

The small house seems suddenly dry, the damp air sucked out of it, and for a moment, all the attention is fixed on Vane. He snaps his head up and glares back at them, effectively abandoning all pretense of ignoring the conversation.

“Are you gonna sit and look at me all day?” Vane shouts. “I had one shitty weekend, I ain’t made of fucking glass. Go fucking look for her so she don’t get herself killed.” Without waiting to see how they react, he looks back at the book. 

It is decided that Jack and Max know Anne best, and that they should be the ones to go looking for her. Max lets herself be guided out the door with Jack at her heels. They close themselves into Max’s car, which they have to take, because Anne disappeared with Jack’s last night, and start driving.

The sounds of summer seem slightly muted. Jack doesn’t like rolling the windows down, so there is nothing between them but the stale air conditioning and a heavy silence. Far on the edge of town like this, the trees and the river seem to press in, seem to make the road claustrophobic. They wind through these long, twisting back roads for a long time. It’s quiet. Even when the road runs along the river, it seems to be speaking softly, for once.

“Did you look anywhere else yet?” Max says finally.

“Of course,” he replies.

“Silver and Madi helped?”

Jack nods, still not looking back at her.

“Did you check with Charles’ landlord?”

“Obviously,” Jack says, bitingly. Max presses on.

“No sign of her?”

“Obviously not.”

Max nods, trying to ignore Jack’s anger. It’s misdirected, she knows, and she’s trying not to take it personally. “Where else?”

“Where the fuck else does she go?” Jack is tucked against the passenger side door, as far away from Max as he can possibly get. “She goes fishing. Goes to the bar. Goes to your place. But somehow I don’t think she gave up on murder to get a drink or a fuck.”

For a moment, that nastiness just sits there. Max grips the wheel tightly, thinking she should wait, as she usually does, wait for Jack to get whatever it is off his chest so they can move past this. But something about him is pricking at her patience. “What is your fucking problem?” Max demands.

“My problem is Anne doesn’t do this,” Jack says furiously. “She doesn’t go off to do God knows what without telling me when she’ll be back. She doesn’t disappear overnight without calling. She doesn’t fucking leave me behind like this.”

“And you blame me?” Max asks, incredulous. “My God, Jack. You never think it has nothing to do with me? Maybe she’s just tired of you holding her back?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Jack spits. 

Max snorts. “Good to know you care about her enough not to let jealousy get in the way of finding her,” she says.

“Don’t you ever say that shit.” His voice is suddenly cold. “Don’t pretend like I don’t love her.”

“Fine,” Max snaps at him. “As long as you don’t pretend like I don’t love her too.” It is, she realizes a split second after she says it, the first time she’s ever said she loves Anne out loud.

“Fine!” Jack folds his arms petulantly and stares out the window. Max has an insane urge to laugh. Two adults, sulking together in the car, bickering despite everything going on.

“I wasn’t saying that,” Jack mutters after a long stretch of silence. “I know you care about her.”

“Of course I do,” Max says, still bristling. 

He intends to keep talking, and Max knows this if only because Jack Rackham has never had nothing to say, but the words die in his throat. Because far up ahead of them is a small, cherry-red truck sitting lopsidedly and blocking half the road, immediately recognizable as the one Jack and Anne share.

“Oh, my God,” Jack breathes. “Pull over.”

Max is already slowing down, coming to a stop directly behind the little red truck. Jack is fumbling out of the car even before she puts it in park. Even before Jack reaches the driver’s side of the truck, even before his face drops, even before his mouth opens in a trembling cry, Max knows something is wrong. She feels it deep in her chest. It’s so hard to force herself from the car, because she knows that when she does, she will have to reckon with the natural end of a sequence of events she put into place.

Anne, her handsome, long-limbed, angry Anne, is limp in the driver’s seat. Her face is so swollen and bloody that it might almost be unrecognizable, if Max could for a moment not recognize Anne. Her head is tipped back, her chin tilted up, exposing choked-on bruises. Her chest is rising and falling shallowly.

“Anne?” Jack is saying, over and over. “Anne. Anne, look at me. Anne. Wake up, Anne.” He’s grasping unsurely at Anne, her arms, her thighs, her hands, her bloody knuckles. He looks back at Max desperately. “Help me move her.”

Max can do nothing but nod. Together, they maneuver Anne’s body into the passenger seat. The tension of the earlier conversation is gone, the two of them connected on the axis of Anne. For now, they are of one mind and one heart.

“We need to take her home,” Jack says shakily. He’s sitting in the driver’s seat now, Max leaning through the open passenger door and buckling Anne’s seatbelt with unsteady hands.

“Are you crazy?” Max gapes at him. “We need to take her to a hospital.”

At this precise moment, Anne groans and shifts. They both look at her, tense, but she doesn’t stir again.

“No insurance,” Jack says, grim. “Friend of mine is a paramedic. We call him when we need help.”

“No,” Max says. For a moment, it’s all she can muster, everything in her reduced to where Anne lies, every breath rattling out of her making Max go cold. Then she says it again. “No. Take her to the fucking hospital. I have insurance. We’ll check her in with my name.”

“You have your papers?”

“In my car.” Max doesn’t wait for him to agree. She closes the car door, taking care not to disturb Anne, and gestures to Jack:  _ follow me. _

Max does not permit herself to get overemotional, not now. She drives to the hospital, Jack pulling in beside her. Anne is brought inside. Max checks her in, making sure to get her a private room, and takes care of the paperwork as Jack clings to Anne’s bedside. But eventually, there is no paperwork left to fill out. Anne is brought in for imaging, and Max and Jack sit helplessly in the waiting room. 

They don’t speak, and Max refuses to let herself spend too long dwelling, so she studies the waiting room. There are no windows, so although she knows it’s a bright summer afternoon outside, it seems that this room exists only in the 3 A.M. hour, exhausted and distant, a stale chill to the air. Beige carpeting, beige plastic seats linked together in rows, ugly wallpaper that’s peeling at the edges. The loved ones of strangers, sitting far enough away from each other so that they won’t have to make eye contact. It seems very far from the clamor of the rest of the hospital, with its bustling staff and beeping machines. Here, there’s only the occasional sniffle, low murmuring in the corner, the woman at the desk tapping incessantly at her computer.

“We should call the others,” Jack says woodenly. He’s staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on nothing.

“Right,” Max says. “Yes.” A long pause. Someone- Max isn’t sure who- lets out a choked sob, blows their nose, and falls silent again. “I’ll call.”

Max goes to the desk, where the woman is still clacking away at the keyboard.

“Can I use the phone, please?” Max asks.

The woman smiles vacantly, not taking her eyes off her screen. “Sure, hon.” She pushes the phone towards Max.

Max knows Silver’s number by heart. She listens to the ringer for only a few seconds before Silver answers.

“Silver.”

“Silver?” Max takes a deep breath. “It’s Max. We found her.”

“Fuck. Is she okay?” Farther away, she hears him speak.  _ They found her. _

Max doesn’t know how to answer that. “We’re at the hospital,” she says instead.

“Jesus fucking Christ. We’re coming now.” He seems to be about to hang up, but he pauses. “You good?”

“Just get here,” Max says, her voice sounding far more fragile than she intended it to. 

“Okay.” He lingers for another moment and then hangs up. Max makes her way back to sit by Jack. He’s fidgeting relentlessly, and next to him, Max feels too still. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, runs his hands through his hair, plays with a button on his shirt, twists rings on his fingers. Max just watches the wallpaper.

“Thanks,” Jack says shortly. “For the insurance.”

“It’s not for you,” Max says.

“I know,” Jack says. “Thank you anyway.”

It seems like a very long time, or maybe no time at all, before the others spill into the waiting room, Silver first, Vane following, and Madi leading up the back. Jack gets up to hug Vane tightly. Vane grunts in surprise, looking with slight panic at Madi and Silver, but he hugs him back, his book still clutched in his hand. 

“You doing okay?” Silver asks, sliding into the seat that shares a back with Max’s own. Max nods mutely. She can’t have this conversation, not right now. He seems to understand, and he lets it be.

Vane sits next to Max, the seat having been vacated by Jack, who’s now at the front desk to harass the woman working there. Vane opens his book and, for what has to be the hundredth time today, starts reading. Max takes it upon herself to interrupt him yet again.

“What are you reading?” she asks.

Vane looks up at her, a long suffering expression on his face. But he closes the book again to show her the cover.

_ “All About Love,”  _ Max reads.

“Madi gave it to me,” Vane says, nodding. “I gave her  _ Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” _

“You read a lot?”

“A lot in jail,” Vane says. He grimaces. “Stopped for a while. But me and Madi read a lot, now.”

“About love?” Max asks.

“Usually about history. Communism, anarchism. Resistance.” Vane shrugs. “Sometimes love, too, I guess.”

Max looks at the book. It looks much too short to contain all of that.

“I was wrong.” Vane’s voice is lower and gruffer than usual, and he isn’t looking at her, staring down at the small book in his big hands. “For what I did when you first got here. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” Max says quietly. She hesitates, wondering if he’ll take offense if she asks, and then pushes forward anyway. “Are you okay?”

Vane shrugs, still looking down at the book. “It is what it is,” he says. “Starting all over again. As many times as it takes.” His low voice is grim. But then he glances up at her, a ghost of a smile on his face. “You know?”

Max doesn’t know what to say, but Vane doesn’t demand a response. He looks back down at his book, clearing his throat as if embarrassed about his moment of vulnerability, and starts to read. This time, Max doesn’t interrupt him, just goes back to watching the wallpaper and listening to Jack bicker with the desk lady.

Anne’s doctor comes into the room, and Max is on her feet before she even realizes she’s moving.

“Any news?” Jack says breathlessly. 

“She’s awake,” the doctor says, warmly. “She wants to see you.”

The five of them trail after the doctor. A nurse flutters behind them, reminding them that only two guests are allowed in at one time, but they soundly ignore her, and the doctor gives them a wink as he opens the door.

“Just a few minutes,” he says.

Anne is in a papery gown hooked up to an IV bag, face still swollen but clean. She looks disgruntled, of all things, and Max doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry.

“My love,” she breathes as she sinks into the chair by Anne’s bedside. Jack is on her other side, talking, as he does, a mile a minute, so Max doubts Anne even heard her. But it’s all right. Max touches Anne’s wrist gently. “Oh, amou, I was so scared.”

“You people look like a fucking circus,” Anne mumbles. Max laughs wetly. She supposes they do, wild-eyed and crowded so tightly around Anne’s bed. “Didn’t know it would be all you bastards.”

“What happened?” Silver says curiously.

“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t feel like it,” Jack says hurriedly, throwing a pointed look at Silver, but Anne shakes her head. 

“No.” As Anne says this, she pulls her hand away from Max. The loss throws her off balance, and after a moment, she withdraws her hands to fold tightly in her lap. 

“I was so fucking angry.” Anne’s voice is flat. “Kicked out Charles. About to kick us out. So I went to his landlord’s. Told him he was gonna pay for the shit he did. He said it wasn’t his fault. Guthries was buying him out for three times what the land was worth, so everyone on it had to go.”

At this, every pair of eyes in the room turns to Max. Her agency’s close ties to the Guthries are no secret, between the six of them, and certainly never something Max has ever felt ashamed of. Never before now.

“So this was-”

“Want me to finish or don’t you?” Anne says irritably. “Shut the fuck up, Jack.” She takes a deep breath and then winces, one hand going instinctively up to her abdomen. After a tense, silent moment, she continues. “Only hit him once.” The bitterness in her voice is clear. “His sons look like fucking bears, you know ‘em? Dragged me outside. Couldn’t do much against three of ‘em, but I got the gun off one of ‘em. Made them let me get in the car and go. But I couldn’t see. Had to pull over. Last thing I remember until I woke up here, fucking doctors telling me I got broken ribs and a concussion and some more bullshit too.”

Everyone is watching Anne, waiting for her to go on, but she doesn’t. Her dark eyes are fixed on the foot of the bed. Max’s hands are still knotted in her lap.

“So, Max.” Jack’s voice is icy. It feels like a slap. “This was Eleanor? You and Eleanor’s little fucking initiative?”

“I didn’t know.” It’s not enough. She knows it’s not enough, even as she says it. “I didn’t know it would be you.”

Jack snorts. “I guess that makes it okay.”

Max reaches out to take Anne’s hand, but she moves away. Tears have been threatening for the last few minutes, but the ones that spill over are not the sweet, hot ones of joy. Quickly, she turns her head away from everyone, not wanting to cry in front of them. Anne is so close to her, though, and Max sees Anne’s eyes follow a tear as it tracks down her face. Max wipes her face and then turns to look at the others.

“I think you should go,” Madi says, not unkindly but firmly. And so there is nothing for Max to do but get to her feet and walk slowly to the door. She keeps her head high, refusing to meet anyone’s eye. The anger is palpable anyway. It shines bright and cold from Jack, disappointed and sad from Madi, rageful and hot from Vane. She doesn’t dare look back to see Anne’s face.

The door swings slowly shut behind her. Max hurries into the horrible fucking waiting room and fumbles in her bag for her car keys and her cigarettes.

“Feel like talking yet?”

Max drops her keys. “Jesus fucking Christ.” She glares up at Silver. “Don’t do that.”

“Get up,” Silver says. “We can come back tomorrow.”

Silver drives them home so that Max can focus on chain smoking and brooding as she watches the trees rush by. It is, impossibly, still a beautiful summer day, the lazy afternoon lit up gold. Max wants to laugh at the fact that Eleanor called her about the goddamn newspaper just this morning. She doesn’t even know if she still has any right to be annoyed with Madi.

Silver is talking. Max isn’t listening, not really. She flicks a cigarette butt out the window and says, “Why didn’t you stay at the hospital with Madi?”

“What? Why would I?” Silver is playing dumb. He does that often, as if Max doesn’t know him better than that.

“If you still want Madi back, you should’ve stayed,” Max says.

“Well, I didn’t bring my car,” Silver says. “I wasn’t getting another ride home.”

Max looks at him from where she’s slouching against the passenger side door. “Do you still want Madi back?” she asks.

“Two breakups was a hint, I think,” Silver says, laughing. She has no patience for his evasiveness, not today.

“Do you still want Madi back?” Max repeats.

The glinting smile fades from his face. “No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

In a single day, everything has changed. Maybe this is the most momentous change, this one in Silver. For as long as she’s known him, he has revolved around Madi, even before the name was spoken between them. It has always been Madi on his mind, Madi that he loved and needed and missed. 

“She’s my friend,” Silver says now. “But you’re…” He’s going to say something like family, Max can see it in the pained sincerity in his expression.

Then it vanishes, and he grins at her. “My landlord,” he finishes. “Couldn’t abandon you.”

Max rolls her eyes and lights another cigarette.

When they get home, Max sits down on the porch under the burning lamp, not quite ready to go inside yet. She has too much to think about, and she thinks that if she goes inside to see the house, conspicuously empty of all the people she’s let in lately, it will upset her more. 

“What do you want?” Silver asks from the doorway. He waves a Chinese food menu at her, and Max shrugs.

“Shrimp fried rice,” she says. Silver nods and then goes inside, leaving her alone on the porch.

The long summer day is, finally, drawing to a close, the sunset throwing red shadows under the clouds, glowing gold through the trees. How many years, how many miseries, how many sleepless nights has she fought through to get here? How many indignities has she suffered just to be here, rocking quietly on a porch that belongs to her, watching the sky as it goes slowly, lovingly dark? How many losses paid for her company, her padded bank account, her excellent health insurance?

The answer is, of course, far too many. It has always been worth it, always. So why, then, does Max feel so unhappy?

The Chinese food arrives. Max carries it inside to where Silver is lying on the couch smoking a joint, his prosthetic thrown to the floor. He looks up from the television and smiles.

“That came at like,  _ exactly _ the right time,” he says.

Max swats at his foot, and he pulls himself up to give her room to sit on the couch. She hands him his noodles and opens her rice. Silver doesn’t talk, just watches TV and waits for her to speak. She gets through almost half her tub of fried rice before she does.

“I could talk to Anne’s landlord,” Max says finally. “Tell him we won’t buy him out, and he doesn’t need to kick his tenants out.”

“You could,” Silver says agreeably. “Vane was still evicted, though.”

“I could find him a new place,” Max says. “No charge.”

“You could,” Silver says again. 

“But the property value is going to go up anyway, in a few years,” Max says quietly. “Their neighbors will hate them. The bars they play at will close, or won’t let them play there. Their landlords will raise the rents anyway, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop it then.”

“You’d be rich by then,” Silver points out. “Think it’s worth it?”

Once, it would have been so easy to say yes. What use does Max have for love? Less than none. No matter how many times she repeats this to herself, she doesn’t believe it anymore.

“I don’t want to let go of Anne,” Max says. “I want everything back how it was.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Silver says, leaning back. “There’s no way in hell Madi or Vane are forgiving you if you don’t fix this, the fucking commies. Jack won’t forgive you, either, not if Anne doesn’t.”

“Would you forgive me?” Max asks.

Something in his expression shifts. “Already did,” he says. Max thinks it was meant to sound flippant, but it doesn’t. “But it’s not just about me, right?”

Max sighs. She puts down the box of fried rice and rubs a hand over her face. “Fuck,” she says. “Fuck.”

Silver kicks at her. “Get it together,” he says. “I’m not telling you what to do, but whatever it is you’re gonna do, you should fucking do it.”

“I’m gonna smoke your weed,” Max says.

“That’s a good first step,” Silver says, grinning.

The back half of Silver’s joint isn’t enough to get her very high, but it relaxes her enough to enjoy the evening. They watch a bad horror movie, laughing all the way through. Max finishes Silver’s noodles, and he eats her rice. It’s startling to realize how precious this really is to her, how much she loves this creaky old house now that there’s love here too.

It’s really nighttime now, maybe too late to call Idelle, but she decides to give it a shot anyway. Max stands with the phone pressed to her ear, heart beating in her throat. 

Idelle picks up on the third ring. “Featherstone household,” she says, cheerful.

“Idelle,” Max says. “It’s Max.”

“Oh my God.” Idelle does not sound pleased. “Where were you today? You were in for like ten minutes! Where did you go?”

“Anne is in the hospital,” Max says, and hears Idelle inhale sharply.

“Jesus. I’m so sorry,” Idelle says, aghast. “Is she okay?”

“She will be.” Max takes a deep breath, gathering the nerve to say what she’s about to say. “Listen. I’m going to shut down the plans for the housing developments.”

_ “What?” _

“I understand if you’re not happy with this,” Max says. “I know it risks the future of the company. But-”

“No,” Idelle says quickly. “I- you know I was never excited about it. I’m just… what the hell made you change your mind?”

Max thinks of Madi, all the talks they had over coffee and upstairs in her home office, Madi’s energy and compassion and her love for her community. She thinks of Vane, resilient and angry, thinks of how he’d let Jack hug him,  _ All About Love  _ held tightly in hand. She thinks of Silver, his loyalty, his brightness and quickness and the way he’d turned her cold house smokey and warm and open. She thinks of Jack, his nervous energy, his talkativeness, the way he is sure of nothing but his love for Charles and Anne. Most of all, she thinks of Anne. She thinks of the days they spent fishing, pressed close together, giving and receiving and loving. She thinks of evenings, eating dinner together at home or crammed into the bar as the band plays, summer nights loose and laughing. She thinks of family, which she hasn’t truly had in almost twenty years.

“It’s not what I want to do with this agency,” Max says.

This explains nothing, but Idelle sounds like she understands. “Okay,” she says. “What do you want to do?”

“You’re going to get in contact with Andrew, from Guthrie’s company,” Max says. “You’re going to tell him that the developments are being canceled. You’re going to call all the landowners we’ve been pressing, and you’re going to tell them all offers have been rescinded. And that’s it. Just focus on your other clients.”

“Eleanor and Rogers are going to kill you,” Idelle says. “And probably just cut our contract and find another agency.”

Max laughs a little. “Let me handle them,” she says.

After she hangs up, Silver grins at her from the couch. “Look at you go,” he says. “You’re not worried about the agency?”

“I am,” Max says, shrugging. “But we’ve gotten ourselves through worse times. We turned profitable in July, and we have a good reputation now.” She smiles back at him. “I’m not letting Eleanor ruin that.”

“Don’t let me stop you.” Silver stretches out again on the couch, turning his attention back to the movie. “Are you gonna come back to finish this? You missed so much. The undead little girl is back. She crawled down this guy’s throat!”

“Tell me what happened tomorrow,” Max calls as she starts up the stairs.

“It's still early. You’re going to bed?” Silver asks, incredulous. 

“No,” Max says. “Good night.”

Max spends a long time in her office hunched over her computer. When she goes to bed several hours later, she’s restless with nervous energy. She can’t tell if it’s excitement or apprehension.

Whatever it is, it’s still thrumming through her the next day, as she spends her entire morning carefully deconstructing almost everything she has been working for for as long as she can remember. And sure enough, by lunchtime, the secretary calls her.

“Mrs. Rogers on line two,” she chirps.

“Thank you, Nell,” Max says, and she clicks to line two. “Crown Realty, this is Max speaking.”

“Max, I need you to explain what the fuck is going on.” Eleanor’s voice is freezing cold. For the first time, that doesn’t bother Max in the least.

Max leans back in her chair and speaks nonchalantly, because she knows it will piss Eleanor off. “What are you talking about?” she asks.

“Andrew just told me Crown Realty is no longer leading point on the housing developments,” Eleanor hisses. “I was counting on you, Max, you’re the only person in this piece of shit fucking town I trusted to do this part.”

“I know,” Max says glibly. “That’s why it’s not happening. Because I’m not doing it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” 

“It’s not happening.” Max enunciates every syllable. 

“Max.” Eleanor breathes deeply and then speaks. “We need to talk about this.”

“I agree. I have an opening at three,” Max replies. “I’ll see you then.” She hangs up the phone before Eleanor has a chance to reply.

Jesus, that felt good.

For a minute, she basks in the first victory, that this step went exactly as she planned it. The next step, though, will be much harder to execute, and so Max curbs her elation. She goes out of her little office to print something out, to find Idelle and August eating lunch together.

“Hey,” August says. “Making a lot of changes around here, huh?” He looks a little less happy about this than Idelle does. He quit a stable job to help start this company, and Max realizes that they’ve probably only just now made it to the kind of money and prestige that August was once accustomed to.

“It’s for the best,” she assures him.

“Is it?” August says skeptically.

“Yes,” Max says firmly. “Startups are always risky.”

“That’s different from taking active risks with no benefits,” August points out.

“Of course there are benefits,” Max says. “Why did you invest in this company to begin with? Why are you working here?”

August shifts uncomfortably. “I wasn’t-”

“I’m not mad at you,” Max says. “I’m really asking.”

His gaze flickers to Idelle. “Because you’re good at what you do,” August says slowly.

“Sure,” Max says. “That’s part of it. But you also did it for Idelle, right? You quit a good job to do something she believed in.”

August looks at Idelle, who is staring at him with shining eyes. “Yeah,” he says, voice a little stronger. “I guess I did.”

Max nods, satisfied, and then turns back to the printer. She leaves them to their lunch, tucked close and talking like newlyweds.

She waits for 3 P.M., and precisely on the hour, Nell calls her office.

“Mr. and Mrs. Rogers here to see you,” she says.

Eleanor and Rogers look tense where they sit, on the hard-backed seats in the waiting area. Max offers them a cheerful smile.

“Eleanor,” she says. “Woodes. So glad you could be here on short notice. Follow me, the meeting room is right over here.”

Max carries on the niceties as the three of them get settled in the meeting room. It’s a very ugly room, not even a sliver as nice as the ones at Guthrie Corp., but Max doesn’t let that embarrass her. She sits back in her chair and sets her folder on the table, and watches them expectantly.

“I thought you said you were going to explain why you’re backing out of this deal,” Eleanor says carefully. “Are we not paying you enough?”

Rogers opens his mouth, probably to let her know that her salary will be increased over his dead body, but Eleanor puts a hand on his arm. He closes his mouth.

“I did not,” Max says primly. “I’m not telling you why I’m backing out of the deal. I’m telling you why these developments aren’t happening.”

“Aren’t happening?” Rogers demands. “Who the hell are you to tell us what business endeavors we can or can’t take on?”

“Woodes,” Eleanor says sharply. She smooths over her expression with what looks like great effort as she turns back to Max. “Listen, whatever it is, we can work it out, all right? If you don’t want to, I completely understand. Just stay on while we find another agency to work with. You know how important this initiative is to me, Max. How important it is for my future at this company. Woodes’ office. My father’s office. If you don’t want to participate anymore, we’ll let you go. But make it easy for us, okay?”

“No,” Max says flatly. At this, Eleanor glimmers with anger that Max is being so inconvenient for her. Max pays her no mind. Instead, she opens her folder. Slowly, deliberately, she peels papers from it one by one, spreading them out before her so that Eleanor and Rogers can read them.

“What the fuck is this?” Rogers is scanning the papers, growing panic on his face.

Max picks up a piece of paper. “This was written by Samuel Livingston, on the board of directors. ‘These developments will be crucial for the town and this company in the long term,’” she reads. “‘If we play our cards right, the median income in this town will double, and that money will feed directly back into the Guthrie Corporation, especially with our good mayor still in office.’” She sets this aside and picks up another email, this one written by Rogers. “‘Buying up the riverside property will be easy. The only people on it are blacks and white trash. We could sell it to them for half of what it’s worth, and they’ll take it happily.’” She turns the page to read aloud Eleanor’s reply. “‘That’s true, but some of those areas are owned by people who rent out their properties. They’ll know how much the land is worth. The key there will be not allowing too much information about this to leak before we’re ready, so that they don’t know how much it will be worth in a few years.’”

“Max.” Eleanor’s voice is tight and angry. “What’s your point?”

“These emails go back ten months, since we started working together,” Max says. “There are messages from Eleanor, Woodes, the mayor, and several board members at the Guthrie Corporation, and these are not the worst of them. At best, it’s bad PR for both of you. At worst, it’s a media storm that ruins both of your careers and sinks your initiative.” Max folds her hands, smiling politely at them. “Your mall and your casino are on track. Go for it. In fact, keep this agency on retainer for any real estate needs you have. I’ll even give you our services at a discount.” She takes immense pleasure in the way that their faces, identically, tighten with rage at that. She doesn’t let her smile slip. “But plans for the housing developments die right here, right fucking now, or every word of this gets sent to the newspaper.”

“We can talk about this,” Eleanor says again.

“We can’t,” Max says with finality. “My mind is made up, and so is yours.” She stands up without gathering the emails. “You can keep these. I have extra copies.”

With that, Max sweeps out of the meeting room and closes herself into her office. Her heart is pounding, but she knows she won. She waits a few minutes, long enough that she knows Eleanor and Rogers have left, and then she goes to Idelle’s desk.

“Idelle,” Max says.

“Need something?” Idelle asks.

“Who’s the man who rents out 492 Oakfield?” Max asks. “Jonathan something?”

Idelle checks her computer. “Yeah,” she says. “Jonathan Masters. The Guthrie Corporation was offering to buy his three riverside properties.”

“You called him?”

“This morning,” Idelle confirms. “He seemed annoyed about having to keep his tenants, but he said he was going to have to now.”

Relief floods through her, and for a moment, she can’t speak. “Okay,” she says finally. “Thank you.”

It is the first time in years that Max has been free of Eleanor, so maybe it is strange that she isn’t thinking of Eleanor at all. She’s thinking of Anne. She wonders if Vane and Jack and Madi are all still there. Jack is, certainly. Madi and Vane probably went home last night to sleep. She imagines Madi driving them back, talking in their strange little way, the conversations about theory and politics that no one else ever cares to join. She’s sure they’ve gone back to visit her, at least for an hour or two. Anne is loved. 

To be loved like Anne is loved, to love like Anne loves… Max thinks with a sudden, shocking certainty that she would give up more than a business opportunity for that.

* * *

Love is a decision, it is a judgement, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgement and decision?

-Eric Fromm,  _ The Art of Loving _


	14. xiv. PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, 1983

In the evenings of my childhood,   
when I went to bed,   
music washed into the cove of my room,   
my door open to a slice of light.   
I felt a melancholy I couldn’t have named,   
a longing for what I couldn’t yet have said   
or understood but still   
knew was longing,   
knew was sadness   
untouched by time.

-Emilie Buchwald,  _ My Mother’s Music _

* * *

Manman is tired today. But Manman is often tired, and so Max does not register her exhaustion anymore. It’s just a fact of life. The sun will rise, and then it will set. Mrs. Cherubin, across the road, will be puffing on a cigarette and muttering about how this town is going to shit. Raymonde will be at the corner a few blocks down, selling sweets. Max will be dusty when she comes inside for dinner. Manman will be tired. Such is Max’s small life: sunsets, sunrises, cigarette smoke, running and laughing with the other children in the street, and her tired-eyed Manman.

This is not to say that Max doesn’t care. On the contrary, the routine of trying to make Manman feel better is just as much a fact of life as Manman’s weariness. She almost always comes back home on time, so that Manman won’t have to worry. When Max can manage to wrangle some of Raymonde’s leftover merchandise at the end of the day, she will carry it home, sticky in her hands, and give it to Manman. 

Manman will usually have a smile to give her. Tonight, she doesn’t. 

“Go wash, baby,” she scolds. “God, how do you always get so dirty out there? You rolling in the mud on purpose?”

“No, Manman,” Max says. She wraps her arms around Manman’s legs, inhaling deeply the smell of dinner. They’ll be eating from the same pot of stew that’s been carrying them for three days, and Manman is warming it.

Manman puts her hand on Max’s shoulder. Her palm is rough and cracked from hours of work, but it’s warm. Max presses her face into Manman’s hip, breathes the smell of sweat and soap.

“Go on,” Manman says, her voice soft now. “Before you get me dirty. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Max stays where she is for another moment, holding tightly. Then she goes to change her clothes, talking all the while.

“Did you see? Raymonde gave me coconut candy,” Max says. “And Natacha traded me fudge for it!” She places the candy carefully on the table, sucking the sugar off her fingers. Manman would yell at her if she noticed, but she doesn’t, stooped over the stove as she is.

“That’s good, baby,” Manman says absently. “Go wash your clothes, huh?”

Max grabs her dirty old clothes from the floor and goes outside. Manman works out here because it’s too much trouble to bring the big tub of soapy water inside. It’s gray now, and cold, because Manman has spent all day scrubbing other people’s clothes with it. Still, there are a few bubbles left. Max drops her clothes into the tub and starts swishing it around until the smears of dirt start to fade. She doesn’t get it all out, but Manman yells her name, so Max decides that’s enough and clips it to the clothesline.

“Come eat,” Manman says. As she carries the food to the table, she steps on a doll Max has left on the floor, and almost trips. “God. Max! I tell you to pick up your toys-”

“Sorry,” Max says, darting forward to pick up the doll. She doesn’t put it away, just keeps it clutched in hand as she watches Manman close her eyes. Sometimes she gets angry, and she yells.

Tonight, she doesn’t. She just puts the food on the table. It’s not a night for anger, with the thin dinner already wearing on them. In any case, the transgression is forgotten quickly. Max regales Manman with everything she did that day, and Manman listens patiently. She gives Max more than half of the food, so Max insists that they share the fudge. That makes Manman smile, a very small, very soft smile that makes Max glow with pride.

After they eat, Max rubs oil into Manman’s hands. Her deep brown skin is dried out up to her elbows, her palms and knuckles almost gray with dead skin. Sometimes her hands crack, and they bleed, and then she has to stop working for fear of staining the clothes. So in the evenings, Max rubs oil into her hands. Manman gives a great sigh of relief as Max takes her left hand, works the oil between her aching fingers.

“Remember, baby,” she says. “We’re getting up early tomorrow. You have to help me bring the laundry back.”

They do this every Saturday, set off with all the laundry from that week so that Manman can return it to its owners and receive payment. It’s fine for Max to play in the street with Manman right there, outside the house and never far from earshot. But on Saturdays, when Manman will be going all over the city with no one to watch Max, Max has to follow and help. She never minds. Saturdays means payday, and payday means fresh food, fish and okra and plantains. Fried plantains are her favorites, and Manman always indulges her for them.

“Okay,” Max says. She holds out her hand expectantly, her pale palm glistening and fragrant with oil. Manman smiles and kisses it, and Max giggles. Manman places her big hand in Max’s small one, and Max watches her tired eyes droop shut.

These are facts of life. Saturday is laundry day. Manman’s hands are dry and cracking. Sometimes, there is only enough food in the pot for one person, and Manman will always give it to Max. Sometimes, Manman will scream at Max for leaving toys on the floor, or licking her dirty fingers, or coming inside with filthy clothes. Sometimes, Max will find Manman crying for what seems like no reason, leaving shining streaks of oil on her face as she wipes away tears.

It is a small life. Often, it is not a nice life. But it is theirs, just the two of them in this little house, and Max holds tightly onto it.

* * *

How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger.

-Cheryl Strayed


	15. xv. OZARKS, MISSOURI, 2003

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole.

-Eric Fromm,  _ The Art of Loving _

* * *

Anne is being discharged this afternoon. Jack calls Max at work, his voice careful and dispassionate, to tell her that she needs to come to the hospital to fill out the release paperwork.

It has already been a very strange day. This is what Max is thinking when she drives to the hospital after work. For once, she has no idea what she’s planning to say. She feels on the brink of something, teetering uncertainly, wondering if the ground under her feet will shake or split open beneath her. Max knows that doesn’t make sense, because she’s already made the decision that’s going to change her foreseeable future.

Still. She stands outside the hospital for a long minute in the stifling summer heat, listening to the wind shake the trees across the road.

Max is hit with the sharp smell of antiseptic as she walks inside. It is not, strictly, a bad smell. Max has often heard people complain that they don’t like hospitals, but here, now, she can’t agree. How could she, knowing how Anne might have suffered without it?

It seems a little warmer in Anne’s room than the rest of the hospital. Anne is wearing fresh clothes, an ice pack pressed to her ribcage. Jack is, as always, talking, using one hand to gesticulate and the other to hold Anne’s. Madi and Vane are sitting off to the side, and they are the first to notice Max come inside.

“How are you feeling?” Max asks.

Anne grunts in reply. She’s refusing to meet Max’s eye. Which, Max supposes, is fair.

“Here.” Jack hands Max the paperwork. “You need to fill this out. We’ll pay you back for the copays. Just send us the bill.”

Max takes it. There’s no other chairs in the room, so she just stands awkwardly by the door, trying to think of what she wants to say.

“I killed the development plans,” Max says.

“What?” Jack says, a little snappish. Max takes a deep breath.

“That land is not going to be bought out,” she says. “There are no plans to develop luxury housing complexes by the river anymore. You will be staying in your home. I made sure of it.”

“Your agency was riding on that,” Madi says, quietly. “You spent years working towards this.”

Max nods. “It puts my company at risk,” she allows. “And if I’m not lucky, it might sink us.”

“Why’d you do it, then?” Jack asks.

It’s hard, being so honest in front of so many people. Max fidgets with the rings on her fingers, but keeps her eyes on Anne. Anne, who has always grounded her, and can ground her now, too.

“I couldn’t do it anymore,” Max confesses. Then she shakes her head and corrects herself. “I didn’t want to do it anymore. You are all so strong. So sure in your love for each other. It’s been a long time since I had this in my life. This kind of… this kind of loyalty.” Tears are threatening now, and she swallows them. “I’m so sorry for betraying that. I’m sorry I didn’t know what to do with it. But I do now.”

She stands there for another moment, still looking at Anne. She can’t bring herself to look anywhere else, but Anne still won’t look at her. “I’ll go fill this out,” Max mumbles, waving the paperwork. She retreats into the hallway, letting the door close behind her.

Max sinks down to sit on the floor. She presses the heel of her hand into her browbone, trying to gather herself, and then she starts filling out the paperwork. At first, she pushes her pen to the page too hard, leaving her name with black blots.

Then the door opens, and Anne slides gingerly down the wall to sit next to Max.

“Missed you,” she says. Her voice is full of gravel, rough and low, but it’s sweet too, in a way Anne reserves just for Max. She was afraid she’d never hear that sweetness again.

“I missed you, too.” Max looks up at the ceiling, trying not to cry. “I’m sorry.”

“You already said that,” Anne reminds her.

“I know,” Max says quietly. “But I need to apologize to you. What I almost did to you is something Eleanor did to me, a long time ago. I never want to make you feel like you’re not enough, or that my love for you isn’t important. Because you are, and it is, and I’m not ever going to protect money or power over you ever again.”

Anne’s hand is bruised, and there are scabs on her knuckles, and the hard skin on her palms is rough. Max loves this hand, loves the way it feels in her own, loves Anne for twining their fingers together without saying another word.

They sit there quietly as Max finishes the paperwork. Anne lets Max help her to her feet, and together they go back inside.

The five of them emerge from the hospital together. Vane bumps Max with his shoulder, and he’s so much bigger than her that it hurts a little, but he doesn’t seem angry.

“You better find me a new goddamn house,” he says.

“Deal,” replies Max.

Anne doesn’t let go of Max’s hand until the last possible second, with all of them standing in the parking lot, the asphalt shimmering with heat. Jack, Vane, and Anne drive off in their cherry-red truck, and Max stands with her hand closed, as though she might be able to hold on to the feeling of Anne, warm and solid and there.

Max is getting in her car to leave when Madi catches her by the shoulder.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asks.

Max’s heart sinks. Madi doesn’t look angry, but she supposes she couldn’t expect forgiveness so quickly. “Yeah,” she forces out. “Sure.”

On the edge of the parking lot, there’s a few thick trees, casting a shadow over a bench. Max flattens her palms on the bench as they sit, feeling how warm the stone is, even in the coolness of the shade. She waits for Madi to speak, and for a moment, it feels just like old times, sitting companionably like they used to.

“I was angry with you,” Madi says quietly. “It felt like even after everything we talked about, you were just going to forget all about it. For your company. It felt like shit. I couldn’t figure out why I was taking it so personally.” Madi pauses, seeming to gather her thoughts. “Eleanor and I were best friends growing up. She used to believe in this town. She used to believe in the people here, in this community, like I did. And I watched her change. I watched her stop caring. And she still expected us to be friends.” Madi shakes her head. “It felt like you were doing the same thing.”

Max doesn’t say anything. She adds Madi’s friendship to the list of Eleanor’s casualties that she keeps in her head.

“You were trying to do the same thing,” Madi says. “But you didn’t. And I know that was hard for you, because you have more to gain and more to lose than Eleanor did. So I want to tell you that I’m really proud of you.”

Unexpectedly, Max feels a lump in her throat. She tries to smile. “It wasn’t that hard,” she says lightly. “You’ve been talking in my ear for so long.”

Madi laughs, sounding a little choked up herself. “I’m glad you listened.” 

“You’re hard not to listen to,” Max replies.

It’s been a long time since they spoke. Max didn’t realize how much she missed Madi.

“I’m glad we’re friends again,” Madi says. She looks at Max. “There’s so much I need to tell you.”

“It’s only been-”

“About two months,” Madi says. “Since we talked properly.”

Max looks at her, surprised. “You counted?”

“Well,” Madi says. “Not exactly.” She looks unsure, which is such an unfamiliar expression on her that Max frowns.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” Madi says quickly. “Yeah. I’m good. I just haven’t told anybody yet, except my parents.”

“Told anybody what?” Max says. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s been two and a half months since John and I broke up,” Madi says carefully. “And, you know, me and him talked. We’re not getting back together. Neither of us want that.”

“Okay,” Max says. She has absolutely no idea where this could possibly be going.

Madi takes a deep breath. She seems to throw caution to the wind. She pulls her feet up onto the bench and turns her whole body to face Max.

“I’m pregnant,” she says.

_ Pregnant.  _ This is a terrifying word, for Max. Something world-changing, something that could destroy all security and safety. But there is so much joy pouring from Madi right now, excitement barely held back, that Max feels herself smiling.

“Oh my God,” Max says. “Oh my God. Really?”

Madi nods. “I know it’s a lot,” she rushes to say. “John is going to be involved, and I know he lives with you-”

“Oh my God.” Max can’t resist laughing. “I’m not- this is good news, Madi, right?”

A smile, slow and warm, spreads over Madi’s face, and she nods. “Yes,” she says, with firm conviction. “This is good news.”

Max grabs Madi’s hands. “Don’t worry. Okay? Your parents will be there for you. Me and Silver will be there for you. Jesus. Do you know how loved this baby is going to be?”

Madi lets out something halfway between a sob and a laugh. “After the last couple days?” she says. “I do.” She leans forward and wraps her arms around Max, and Max hugs her back tightly. “I really fucking missed you, you know.”

Things don’t go back to normal. They couldn’t, after all that’s happened. Instead, time does as it always seems to do: it marches on. The summer is drawing to a close, and the tourists are leaving. This year, the summer heat seems to linger.

It’s a good evening, warm, with a talkative breeze that rings the windchimes, rustles the trees, seems to touch Max’s cheek in greeting as it passes her. She’s out on the porch, enjoying the last of the sunlight, when Silver’s car pulls into the driveway. It’s tiny and shitty parked beside her own, still with Connecticut license plates.

Silver comes to rest in the chair opposite her own. He looks so much like he did when she first met him. Maybe his hair is a little longer, or his boots are a little more scuffed. The greeting he offers, certainly, is nothing like the first one he ever gave her.

“Madi is pregnant,” he says. There is nothing positive and nothing negative in his expression, only a deep shell-shock.

“Yes,” Max says.

“Oh my God,” Silver says. “You knew?”

“Yes,” Max says, trying not to laugh. “She’s probably told everyone by now.”

“You mean I’m the last one to know?” He gapes, and then scrubs a hand down his face. “She loves making me look fucking dumb, huh?” 

At that, Max does laugh. “Well, you make it so easy,” she says.

“Shut up,” he says, but there’s no anger there.

They sit, Max rocking back and forth in her chair, Silver with his feet planted firmly on the creaking porch. She looks at him.

“Are you scared?” she asks.

“Aren’t I supposed to be?” 

Max shrugs and then looks back at the sky, the fading sunlight. Fireflies are starting to wink in the darkness of the front yard, flitting between the branches of the big tree. The porch light shines steadily.

“I used to be scared of getting pregnant,” she says. “Especially back in New Orleans. I knew so many girls whose entire lives blew up because of a baby.”

All that time ago, Silver might have interrupted, made a joke, maybe. Now, he waits for her to continue.

“Parents who abandoned her.” Max reaches into her pocket for a cigarette. “No boyfriend, or a shitty one, maybe. Friends or sisters or cousins who were just as overworked and tired as she was, so it was hard to help her. Or maybe nobody at all. That was me,” she adds. “No parents. No boyfriend. No family. No friends I could really count on. So if I got pregnant, I wouldn’t be able to raise it. Maybe I wouldn’t even be able to love it.”

Silver passes her a lighter, and she takes it. She lights her cigarette and then passes it back. 

“My mom was like that.” Max watches the cigarette smoke curl through the air. “She loved me. But she had nothing else.”

For a moment, Max thinks she’s said too much, bared a part of herself that should have stayed hidden. But Silver is looking at her, soft and without judgement, and Max takes one deep breath and keeps talking.

“But I also knew girls who did have all that,” she goes on. “A family. Friends who loved them. And even though it was hard, because it’s always hard, they loved being a mom. Because the baby was loved, and the mother was loved, too.”

In the low light, Silver looks stricken.

“It seems insane, doesn’t it?” Max asks softly. “That a child could be raised well?”

“Yeah,” he says roughly. “But this one will be.”

“Yeah,” Max agrees. “It will be.”

This September is an unusually warm one. While Anne recovers, the six of them spend their time together at Jack and Anne’s, swimming in the river and eating lunch outside. Max sits by Anne, cutting fruit up into cubes for her even though Anne complains that she can do it on her own. Madi and Vane swim all day, splashing Jack and Silver where they sit on the riverbank. 

“I’m fucking reading!” Jack shouts. He waves his book at them. “You goddamn assholes! It’s made of paper!”

“Books usually are,” Silver says lazily. He’s lying back on a towel, shirt off and hair loose, sipping from Jack’s drink. “Stop bitching, man.”

“That’s like telling him to stop breathing,” Vane calls from the water.

“Fuck you, Charles!” Jack shouts. 

Vane waggles his eyebrows at Jack. “Come and get it,” he says. “Fuck!” Madi has sprung up from the surface, spraying him with water. Jack laughs.

“Not so nice, is it!” he yells.

“What are they doing?” Anne asks. She and Max are sitting farther up the riverbank, Anne lying on her back and staring up at the sky. Max sits next to her, cutting the watermelon that Vane brought.

“I don’t know,” Max says airily. “Open up.”

Anne opens her mouth and lets Max place a piece of watermelon on her tongue. “You know I can eat by myself,” she says, not sounding very upset.

“Of course you can, my love.” Max pops a piece into her mouth. “But can’t I take care of you?”

Anne grunts. She opens her mouth, a silent request for more watermelon. Max laughs and acquiesces. She adjusts Anne’s ice pack where it rests against her ribcage.

“How are you feeling?” Max asks.

“Good,” Anne replies. This is her answer every time Max asks about her health, even on days when Jack tells Max that Anne hasn’t been feeling well today. Still, she seems perfectly sincere every time she says it.

“Does anything hurt?” Max prods. “How is your head?”

“Ribs hurt,” Anne says. “Head’s a little fuzzy.”

“Well, that’s not good, then,” Max points out.

“It’s good,” Anne insists. “‘Cause you’re here.”

And that, well, Max can’t bring herself to refute. She leans down to kiss Anne. Her lips taste like watermelon.

Jack and Anne’s house is smaller than Max’s, so when it’s time for dinner, they cram onto mismatched chairs around a table that is too small for the six of them. Madi and Jack argue about the novel he’s reading. Silver keeps interrupting them to push more food onto Madi’s plate, which she lets him do even though it makes Vane laugh. With Anne’s concussion, Vane’s recovery, and Madi’s pregnancy, all three of them have stopped drinking, so there is entirely too much beer left over for Jack to get drunk off of. This delights Silver, because Jack only finds him funny when he’s drinking. Anne’s little finger is curled around Max’s under the table, and although Anne doesn’t talk much, she’s sharply attuned to the rest of them, engaged and smiling.

It’s a good night. Max drives home, Silver half asleep in the passenger seat. The sky is so clear, the moon so bright, that she can see him plain as day, opening and closing his cell phone to see if Madi’s called him yet.

“Think she got home okay?” he mumbles sleepily.

“She said she would call when she did,” Max reminds him. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” Silver protests. He puts his phone in his pocket, and looks toward her as they pull into the driveway. The light on the porch is glowing. Max, absentmindedly, reaches one hand out the window. The leaves of the big tree brush against her fingers. When she turns off the car, she can hear the windchimes, tinkling faintly.

The house is warm and dark when they step inside. Silver’s phone rings, suddenly, and they both jump. He opens it and puts it on speaker.

“Hi, John.”

“Hi, Madi,” Silver and Max say at the same time.

“Hi, Max,” Madi replies. “I’m glad there’s a witness. He can’t say I didn’t call.”

Max laughs. “Good night,” she says.

“Night,” Madi says, yawning.

“Good night, Madi,” Silver says softly. The call ends.

It is a good day, a good dinner, a good night in a long line of many. Max thinks on how long it has taken her to reach this, how much she has suffered for this good night. Perhaps she isn’t all the way okay, not yet, but it seems all right now. With all she gives, and with all she has been given in return, Max can rest easy on stable ground.

* * *

I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be   
so much love,   
you won’t be able to see beyond it.

-Warsan Shire,  _ Backwards _

* * *

There’s love of children, love of self, love of God, love of a partner. And all of them have a different shape, but all of them is the same in the end. It’s about sensitivity. It’s about passion. It’s about the unconditional giving of self to another person. And there’s love of humanity. That’s the love that is right now needed most. Love of humanity.

-L’Antoinette Stines

* * *

Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.

-bell hooks,  _ All About Love _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We did it yall.....we made it. im so grateful to all of u who have been reading, and i hope u liked this conclusion. (cuz like, yes, the thematic resonance of our mains who grew up with so little love in their lives being able to build a family with each other and love this child beyond anything they ever got in their own childhoods, but also, i think this is the perfect silvermadi dynamic. yes they see each other five times a week. yes theyre raising a child together. yes silver still considers her the love of his life. no theyre not entangled at all why do u ask.) 
> 
> i have a lot more story left in this au (flint and miranda land in the ozarks not long after this) but no time to write any of it! so hopefully this will not be the last installment, but it is the last installment for at least a while. hope u enjoyed, let me know what u think, etc etc and thank u all!

**Author's Note:**

> to my dear friend mx boltcutters thank u for all the energy u put into this w me i love u so much!!
> 
> find me on tumblr @piratemadi :)


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